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This paper describes the principles of the a.c. field measurement technique, a non‐contacting electromagnetic method of crack detection and sizing in metals. The development of the technique is covered, followed by examples of some of the many different applications the technique has been used for, including multi‐sensor arrays for rapid manual inspection or for deployment by robotic manipulator in hazardous environments. Finally, recent work on replacing the normal multi‐turn coil magnetic field sensors with newly available GMR sensors is discussed.

In speeches and testimonies, Alan Greenspan claimed intellectual links between his financial policies and the ideas of Milton Friedman and Joseph A. Schumpeter on banks, central banks, and financial crises. As the financial crisis deepened in 2008, Greenspan admitted that his policies had been shockingly wrong. The purpose of this paper is to explain why his claims of intellectual links between those policies and the ideas of Friedman and Schumpeter were also wrong.

Beginning with representative examples of Greenspan's citations of Friedman and of Schumpeter as supporting his financial policies, the authors review the economic ideas of Friedman and Schumpeter on banks, central banks, and financial crises. In each case, we contrast Greenspan's financial policies with those ideas, demonstrating the spurious nature of his claims of intellectual links.

While expanding the role of the Federal Reserve in the financial markets, Greenspan's financial policies were based on the declaration that deregulation and financial innovations were providing flexibility and stability for the entire financial system. In his financial policies, Greenspan rejected Friedman's recommendations for changes in the powers and functioning of the Federal Reserve that featured a monetary policy rule and the 100 percent reserve requirement for deposits that would involve the separation of depository banking from loans and investments. From a Schumpeterian perspective, Greenspan's policies encouraged and facilitated the massive “reckless” finance that was responsible for the financial crisis of 2007‐2009.

Greenspan's legacy as Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board is one of policies that first contributed to recurring financial crises of increasing severity and were then followed by an extraordinary policy expansion of the Federal Reserve in attempts to cope with the crises. On that basis, it is important to have a clear understanding of the lack of intellectual support for those policies from the influential economists with whom he claimed intellectual links.

During the Greenspan‐Bernanke era, the responses of Federal Reserve officials to financial crises resulted in an extraordinary involvement of the US central bank in the non‐banking financial sector. The purpose of this paper is to examine the informal and evolving conceptual framework that allows Federal Reserve officials to pursue a strategy of “constrained discretion” in responding to financial disturbances.

Behavioural economics relies on designed psychological and economic experiments to predict behavioural biases at the group level. As an analogue applicable to understanding biases in the intuitive judgments of individual policymakers, a naïve behavioural economics approach relies on intuitive or naive psychology and the interpretation of historical events as natural experiments to explain why intuitive judgments of Federal Reserve officials will contain biases.

Under the Greenspan‐Bernanke conceptual framework, Federal Reserve officials exercise “constrained discretion” in responding to disturbances arising from macro structural changes in the financial sector. The two key concepts are the Greenspan‐Bernanke doctrine on how the Federal Reserve officials respond to financial asset price bubbles and their collapses, and Bernanke's financial accelerator. Several examples are cited in which policy errors made by Alan Greenspan were attributable to identifiable biases in his intuitive judgment. In addition, Bernanke's response to the financial crisis of 2007‐2009 was based on his interpretation of the Great Depression as a natural experiment. But that interpretation was heavily biased by the influence of Milton Friedman on Bernanke's intuitive judgment. While Federal Reserve officials will need to exercise discretionary judgment in responding to financial crises, the potential for errors due to biases in that judgment can be reduced through regulatory reforms that lessen the potential for financial crises to occur.

While quantitative analyses of the effects of the Federal Reserve's actions on non‐bank financial institutions and the financial markets are ongoing, little attention has been given to the psychological aspects of the intuitive judgment that influences the discretionary decisions of the policymakers.

The purpose of this paper is to develop an analysis of the improbable events of housing market bubbles occurring in a period when US and UK central bankers were responding to perceived risks of a new deflation.

The methodology focuses on how the anti-deflation policies implemented by the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England contributed to the housing market bubbles. The central bankers perceived the deflation as a Keynesian short-run deficiency in aggregate demand, triggered by a financial crisis. Indications are that the deflation is in the nature of long-run aggregate-supply-driven trend as explained in Veblen’s theory of “chronic” deflation driven by cost-reducing advances in technology and globalization.

The Keynesian anti-deflation policies of the Federal Reserve and Bank of England failed to counter the deflation risks while contributing to housing market bubbles. Moreover, the policies failed to address the structural problems of unemployment and income inequality associated with long-run aggregate supply deflation.

Effective policies must be based on a correct theoretical understanding of the problems. The chronic nature of the new deflation points to the need for new approaches to deal with the negative income and employment effects that exclude an increasing number from the housing markets.

The paper investigates the closure mechanisms and strategies of exclusion concerning the establishment and subsequent functioning of the Collegio dei Rasonati, the professional body of accountants that was established in Venice in 1581 and operated until the end of the 18th century.

The research design offers a critical longitudinal explanation of the emergence of the Collegio dei Rasonati as a professional body in the context of Venetian society by relying on the social closure theory elaborated by Collins (1975); Parkin (1979) and Murphy (1988).

The Collegio dei Rasonati was established to overcome the prerogatives of a social class in accessing the accounting profession. However, the pre-existing professional elites enacted a set of social closure strategies able to transform this professional body into a stronghold of their privileges.

As virtually all of the evidence concerning the admission examinations has been lost over time, the investigation is restricted to the study of the few examples that have survived. The main implication of the study concerns the understanding of some dynamics leading to neutralize attempts to replace class privileges with a meritocratic system.

The research investigates the structure of the rules of social closure revealing the possibility of an antagonistic relationship between different co-existing forms of exclusion within the same structure. Moreover, it highlights that a form of exclusion can be made of different hierarchical levels.

The desirability of financial reform to avoid another financial melt‐down is widely accepted, but the likelihood of reform is uncertain. The purpose of this paper is to present a case study of evolution and reform attempts at US mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and provides an instructive model of the likely long‐term success of attempts to reform the financial system.

A model of the legislative and regulatory change process is first developed, considering the range of influences that arise. The history of reform attempts for US government sponsored mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are examined in the context of this model.

The model predicts that reform will often be thwarted. US government sponsored mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac helped fuel the housing bubble and required a government bail‐out. Sentiment for reform was high, but what happened next was – nothing. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have a long history of successful lobbying, and they succeeded again. They did not need to stop legislation. They needed only to see it delayed long enough for attention to turn elsewhere. Five years after the bubble broke, their market dominance and the implied guarantees continue. Reform is not on the legislative agenda. This outcome does not bode well for financial market reform or stability.

An understanding of the process, influences, and likelihood of reform is important for governments, businesses, and individuals. While the picture this paper paints is not optimistic, it is important.

I MUST SAY, I was astonished to read in the editorial in the November issue of Assistant librarian the bald declaration that AL ‘is broke’. I mean, whatever will the printers think?

Retirement is a phenomenon unique to modern industrial societies. It is only within the last century, through technological and scientific advances, that industrial nations have been able to produce significant surpluses of food and goods, while simultaneously diminishing the effects of disease and raising the overall standard of living. These advances, combined with the demographic shift which accompanies a declining birth rate (a proportional increase in number of old people to total population), the development of large national bureaucracies, and sudden shifts in the industrial market, have left significant numbers of older workers with obsolete skills and have led to the evolution of a major “retired” segment of the population.

Application of the numerical method to the art of Medicine was regarded not as a “trivial ingenuity” but “an important stage in its development”; thus proclaimed Professor Bradford Hill, accepted as the father of medical statistics, a study still largely unintelligible to the mass of medical practitioners. The need for Statistics is the elucidation of the effects of multiple causes; this represents the essence of the statistical method and is most commendable. Conclusions reached empirically under statistical scrutiny have mistakes and fallacies exposed. Numerical methods of analysis, the mathematical approach, reveals data relating to factors in an investigation, which might be missed in empirical observation, and by means of a figure states their significance in the whole. A simplified example is the numerical analysis of food poisoning, which alone determines the commonest causative organisms, the commonest food vehicles and the organisms which affect different foods, as well as changes in the pattern, e.g., the rising incidence of S. agona and the increase of turkey (and the occasions on which it is served, such as Christmas parties), as a food poisoning vehicle. The information data enables preventive measures to be taken. The ever‐widening fields of Medicine literally teem with such situations, where complexities are unravelled and the true significance of the many factors are established. Almost every sphere of human activity can be similarly measured. Apart from errors of sampling, problems seem fewer and controversy less with technical methods of analysis then on the presentation and interpretation of figures, or as Bradford Hill states “on the application of common sense and on elementary rules of logic”.

The role of debt in episodes of financial stability is a topic of increasing important as the global economy struggles to recover from the worst crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The purpose of this paper is to examine the mortgage finance booms of the 1920s and 2000s as natural experiments, new insights into debt-driven financial crises are gained.

The general methodology is interpreting anomalous historical events as natural experiments. The specific methodology is the approach to natural experiments provided by Joseph A. Schumpeter and Milton Friedman. The hypothesis tested is that laxity in lending standards was the prime contributor to the mortgage debt booms. In each case, we explain why factors other than laxity in lending standards would be secondary factors, with the pre-boom and post-boom lending standards providing the control groups of natural experiments. The two episodes of mortgage debt booms occurring under very different general economic and financial conditions provide an especially strong test of the hypothesized functional relationship.

The results of the two natural experiments support the hypothesis that lax lending standards were the prime contributors to the two episodes of debt-driven financial crisis.

From a social economics perspective, the insights gained are important because a major social goal has been to encourage greater opportunities for home ownership. The results of these natural experiments provide guidance for policymakers in the search for a viable balance between achieving that social goal and maintaining financial stability.