Geographies of Finance : Centers, Flows, and Relations

In this paper, I critically examine how geographers and other social scientists have developed complementary research programs for economistic studies of finance by drawing on new relational concepts such as networks and embeddedness and opening up new research frontiers. In so doing, I investigate how global financial spaces have been conceptualized in mainstream finance literature and how economic concepts have been applied to studies of finance. Drawing on these discussions, I suggest that we need to undertake an alternative research of financial space that pays more attention to relational power dynamics among financial firms and the macroeconomic impacts of financial flows on regional economies.Relational Turns, Financial Space, Financial Centers, Financial Flows

The Burden of Giving: Race, SES, and Nativity Differences in Providing Informal Financial Assistance

Interpersonal relationships within social networks provide resources for individuals to overcome financial hardships and emotional uncertainty. One form of support, giving money to family members and friends (i.e., informal financial assistance), has received little empirical attention, even when it comes at an economic and social cost to the person providing support. Drawing on negative social capital theory, it is hypothesized that racial minorities and immigrants may be more likely to provide monetary support to members of core discussion networks, given the persistent economic embedded in their social networks. The objective of this study is to examine i) racial differences in providing financial assistance ii) how race moderates the relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) and providing financial assistance iii) how race moderates the relationship between nativity status and providing financial assistance. The results of this project, using logistic regression analyses of the 2017 Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), find that higher SES Black and Native American individuals are more likely than White individuals of similar SES, to provide informal financial assistance to members of core discussion networks. Foreign-born Black and Hispanic individuals are significantly more likely to provide money to members of networks than their foreign-born White counterparts. Moving beyond previous research, this study demonstrates the nuanced patterns of financial giving, and how they vary by SES and nativity for Black and Hispanic individuals compared to White individuals. Advisor: Jeffrey A. Smit

A Complex Social Network Analyses of Online Finanical Communties in Times of Geopolitcal Military and Terrorist Events

Given the advances in technology the field of social network analysis has very much hit the forefront in recent years. The information age harnesses the use of social network analysis for multiple industries and for solving complex problems. Social network analysis is an important tool in the world of the military and counter intelligence, whether it’s the capture of Osama Bin Laden or uncovering hidden Al Qaeda terrorist networks, the world around us is built on networks, be that hidden or otherwise. Online social networks give new information in the world of intelligence agencies similarly online financial communities such as Yahoo Finance gives intelligent information to knowledge hungry investors. This thesis is concerned with the exploration and exploitation of online financial community dynamics and networks using social network analysis (SNA) as a mechanism. Social network analysis measurement techniques will be applied to understand the reaction of online investors to military and terrorist geopolitical events, the stock market’s reaction to these events and if it is possible to predict military stock prices after military and terrorist geopolitical events

Trends Prediction Using Social Diffusion Models

The importance of the ability of predict trends in social media has been growing rapidly in the past few years with the growing dominance of social media in our everyday's life. Whereas many works focus on the detection of anomalies in networks, there exist little theoretical work on the prediction of the likelihood of anomalous network pattern to globally spread and become "trends". In this work we present an analytic model the social diffusion dynamics of spreading network patterns. Our proposed method is based on information diffusion models, and is capable of predicting future trends based on the analysis of past social interactions between the community's members. We present an analytic lower bound for the probability that emerging trends would successful spread through the network. We demonstrate our model using two comprehensive social datasets - the "Friends and Family" experiment that was held in MIT for over a year, where the complete activity of 140 users was analyzed, and a financial dataset containing the complete activities of over 1.5 million members of the "eToro" social trading community.Comment: 6 Pages + Appendi

Statistical Proof and Theories of Discrimination

We live in a tightly knit world. Our emotions, desires, perceptions and decisions are interlinked in our interactions with others. We are constantly influencing our surroundings and being influenced by others. In this thesis, we unfold some aspects of social and economical interactions by studying empirical datasets. We project these interactions into a network representation to gain insights on how socio-economic systems form and function and how they change over time. Specifically, this thesis is centered on four main questions: How do the means of communication shape our social network structures? How can we uncover the underlying network of interests from massive observational data? How does a crisis spread in a real financial network? How do the dynamics of interaction influence spreading processes in networks? We use a variety of methods from physics, psychology, sociology, and economics as well as computational, mathematical and statistical analysis to address these questions

Opinion dynamics: models, extensions and external effects

Recently, social phenomena have received a lot of attention not only from social scientists, but also from physicists, mathematicians and computer scientists, in the emerging interdisciplinary field of complex system science. Opinion dynamics is one of the processes studied, since opinions are the drivers of human behaviour, and play a crucial role in many global challenges that our complex world and societies are facing: global financial crises, global pandemics, growth of cities, urbanisation and migration patterns, and last but not least important, climate change and environmental sustainability and protection. Opinion formation is a complex process affected by the interplay of different elements, including the individual predisposition, the influence of positive and negative peer interaction (social networks playing a crucial role in this respect), the information each individual is exposed to, and many others. Several models inspired from those in use in physics have been developed to encompass many of these elements, and to allow for the identification of the mechanisms involved in the opinion formation process and the understanding of their role, with the practical aim of simulating opinion formation and spreading under various conditions. These modelling schemes range from binary simple models such as the voter model, to multi-dimensional continuous approaches. Here, we provide a review of recent methods, focusing on models employing both peer interaction and external information, and emphasising the role that less studied mechanisms, such as disagreement, has in driving the opinion dynamics. [...]Comment: 42 pages, 6 figure

Dynamical Systems

Complex systems are pervasive in many areas of science integrated in our daily lives. Examples include financial markets, highway transportation networks, telecommunication networks, world and country economies, social networks, immunological systems, living organisms, computational systems and electrical and mechanical structures. Complex systems are often composed of a large number of interconnected and interacting entities, exhibiting much richer global scale dynamics than the properties and behavior of individual entities. Complex systems are studied in many areas of natural sciences, social sciences, engineering and mathematical sciences. This special issue therefore intends to contribute towards the dissemination of the multifaceted concepts in accepted use by the scientific community. We hope readers enjoy this pertinent selection of papers which represents relevant examples of the state of the art in present day research. [...

Analisis Ekonomi Kelembagaan Keuangan Masyarakat: Studi Modal Sosial Dan Dinamika Pendapatan Dalam Prespektif Ekonomi Syariah

Institutional economic analysis is one of the important studies in modern economics, especially in assessing the relationship of social capital and income dynamics as a construct variable in the perspective of Islamic economics. The study uses a systematic literature review approach originating from accredited journals, the data reduction process is carried out by structuring exogenous research topics in mapping literature that is closely related to the problem unit. The results of the study provide information that networks, norms, trust, reciprocity are the identified factors that are dominant in constructing social capital factors and income dynamics towards institutional economics, especially in the Islamic economic perspective, the aspect of shared value is the dominant factor which is known to originate from public trust in religious values. from sharia-compliant financial institutions. Another finding is that most of the research is dominated by institutional economic perspectives, social capital and income dynamics are interrelated and influence each other and this also happens within the Islamic economic framework. Strong and quality social capital can affect the dynamics of income in society, which is agreed by most of the previous research has a significant positive impact on economic development