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Speed bumps invite varied responses from homeowners, drivers and policymakers. Parents of small children like speed bumps, if they slow the passing traffic, but prospective home buyers may reject a home with a speed bump nearby, contemplating the traversal of it thousand times during an ownership period. The purpose of this study is to empirically identify the effect of speed bumps on home values.

Analysis presented here is based on an examination of home sales prices and exploits variation in the number of speed bumps traversed and the installation of speed bumps to identify the effect of speed bumps on home values. An anonymous online survey is also used to shed light on drivers of the empirical results.

Initial results exploiting variation in the number of bumps traversed suggest speed bumps are associated with reduced residential property values. An estimated treatment effect of speed bump installation underscores the original findings. Finally, survey results imply that older homeowners and homeowners with children may favor speed bumps but less than the disfavor of those who do not.

The research presented here applies to speed bumps in residential areas and on streets not considered through streets.

The findings suggest that planners should investigate options such as medians and roundabouts instead of speed bumps.

These results suggest that communities can be visually improved and home values lifted through the removal of speed bumps and installation of other traffic control devices.

This research is valuable to residential developers, planners and neighborhood associations across the country.

Aarhus Kommunes Biblioteker (Teknisk Bibliotek), Ingerslevs Plads 7, Aarhus, Denmark. Representative: V. NEDERGAARD PEDERSEN (Librarian).

This chapter examines the acts of burial and exhumation in three contemporary British history plays. For the purposes of this argument, a ‘history play’ may be defined as a piece of writing for the theatre that engages with historical events or settings. Such plays inevitably, at the moment of their staging or revival, take on particular meanings for audiences, since theatre as a live, durational art form encourages spectators to compare the historical events depicted with their present historical moment. The chapter argues that acts of burial and exhumation in contemporary British theatre are intimately tied to notions of land, soil and belonging. These became increasingly pertinent ideas in the UK’s political climate in the years following the 2016 Referendum on membership of the European Union. Of the three case studies, Victoria by David Greig (2000) dates from more than a decade before this vote, whilst Common by D. C. Moore (2017), and Eyam by Matt Hartley (2018) were written and staged in the interim between the Referendum result and the UK’s withdrawal from the EU. All three, however, feature corpses on stage as a means to consider time, temporality, place and history. Each play offers a different interpretation of what it means to play dead and to stay dead.

The Milk Order of 1922, issued by the Minister of Health in exercise of the powers conferred upon him by Section 3 of the Milks and Dairies (Amendment) Act of 1922, which came into operation on the 1st January, 1923, provides a scheme whereby Milk may be graded and supplied under certain conditions of comparative bacteriological purity. The sale of ordinary milk will be unaltered by this new order and its distribution will remain subject to such regulations as may have been in operation prior to the Act of 1922. The object of the new Order is to ensure the production of certain grades of Milk under more or less strict supervision, and when the grave lack of sanitary conditions which is to be found on many of the farms where milk is produced, is remembered, it will be admitted that there exists a wide scope for improvement in the direction indicated.

Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Term. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are available through normal trade sources. Mrs. Cheney, being a member of the editorial board of Pierian Press, will not review Pierian Press reference books in this column. Descriptions of Pierian Press reference books will be included elsewhere in this publication.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the professionalism and professionalization of sustainability assurance providers based on the experiences and perceptions of auditors involved in this activity.

The empirical study was based on 38 semi-directed interviews conducted with assurance providers from accounting and consulting firms.

The findings highlight the division of this professional activity between accounting and consulting firms, each of which question the professionalism of the other. The main standards in this area tend to be used as legitimizing tools to enhance the credibility of the assurance process rather than effective guidelines to improve the quality of the verification process. Finally, the complex and multifaceted skills required to conduct sound sustainability assurance and the virtual absence of recognized and substantial training programs in this area undermine the professionalization of assurance providers.

This work has important practical implications for standardization bodies, assurance providers and stakeholders concerned by the quality and the reliability of sustainability disclosure.

This study shows how practitioners in this area construct and legitimize their professional activity in terms of identity, standardization and competences. The work contributes to the literatures on the assurance of sustainability reports, self-regulation through standardization and professionalization.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the practices, challenges and ethical issues underlying the fabric and dissemination of corporate sustainability ratings.

Based on 36 semi-structured interviews with sustainability rating practitioners, the study shows the trade-offs, ethical judgments and customizable aspects involved in rating practices, which cannot rely only on formal and predefined methods.

In contrast with the official optimistic rhetoric about the rationality and rigor of sustainability rating methods, agencies face serious challenges in the measurement and comparison of performance in this area, particularly in terms of the aggregation of scattered and fuzzy indicators, commercial pressures and the availability, materiality and reliability of the information collected. Despite these concerns, sustainability ratings do appear to be useful in improving corporate responsiveness and increasing investor awareness of the complex and difficult-to-measure aspects of nonfinancial reports.

Rating agencies should collaborate to set up common indicators that would be easier for firms to produce and should better separate their sustainability rating production activities from other services they offer to companies (e.g. consultancy).

This study contributes to the literature on the measurement and promotion of corporate sustainability by analyzing rating practices through the lens of moral fictionalism, which here refers to the human tendency to build ethical judgments on fictional but convenient and useful representations.