The Patterns of cross-border portfolio investments in the GCC region: do institutional quality and the number of expatriates play a role?

In this paper, we document the determinants of portfolio investments to Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) economies by bringing up the role played by market forces, cultural anities, and institutional quality. We classify the GCC economies as host to 35 countries as per the Coordinated Portfolio Investment Surveys (CPIS) of the IMF for the period 2001- 2006. Using the CPIS data and data from various other reliable sources and appropriate panel data analysis techniques, we find a number of interesting results: 1) the relatively higher quality of institutional set up in GCC in comparison to other countries; 2) the relative volume of expatriates across source countries in GCC soil; and 3) bilateral factors such as trade linkages between GCC and source countries, all statistically and significantly explain portfolio investments to the GCC region. Additionally, we uncover the existence of a portfolio GCC bias". That is, GCC investors exhibit a strong preference towards their own markets when allocating their cross border nancial asset holdings.International Portfolio Allocation, GCC, Bilateral Linkage, Institutional Quality, Expatriates.

A Quantitative Approach to Understanding Online Antisemitism

A new wave of growing antisemitism, driven by fringe Web communities, is an increasingly worrying presence in the socio-political realm. The ubiquitous and global nature of the Web has provided tools used by these groups to spread their ideology to the rest of the Internet. Although the study of antisemitism and hate is not new, the scale and rate of change of online data has impacted the efficacy of traditional approaches to measure and understand these troubling trends. In this paper, we present a large-scale, quantitative study of online antisemitism. We collect hundreds of million posts and images from alt-right Web communities like 4chan's Politically Incorrect board (/pol/) and Gab. Using scientifically grounded methods, we quantify the escalation and spread of antisemitic memes and rhetoric across the Web. We find the frequency of antisemitic content greatly increases (in some cases more than doubling) after major political events such as the 2016 US Presidential Election and the "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville. We extract semantic embeddings from our corpus of posts and demonstrate how automated techniques can discover and categorize the use of antisemitic terminology. We additionally examine the prevalence and spread of the antisemitic "Happy Merchant" meme, and in particular how these fringe communities influence its propagation to more mainstream communities like Twitter and Reddit. Taken together, our results provide a data-driven, quantitative framework for understanding online antisemitism. Our methods serve as a framework to augment current qualitative efforts by anti-hate groups, providing new insights into the growth and spread of hate online.Comment: To appear at the 14th International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM 2020). Please cite accordingl

World migration report 2018

"This volume is the result of a highly collaborative venture involving a multitude of partners and contributors under the direction of the editors. The World Migration Report 2018 project commenced in September 2016 and culminated in the launch of the report in November 2017 by the Director General at the 108th Session of the IOM Council. The opinions expressed in this report are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of IOM. The designations employed and the presentation of material throughout the report do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of IOM concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area, or of its authorities, or concerning its frontiers or boundaries.

In and Out of Place: Islamic Domestic Extremism and the Case of the "Toronto 18"

In the aftermath of the tragic events of 11 September 2001 a veritable cornucopia of formal, practical, and popular materials have emerged that offer analyses of various dimensions of the phenomenon of Islamitic extremism. Unfortunately, despite the voluminous amount of analytical capital and resources expended, significant advances in our collective understanding of this phenomenon continue to be elusive. This situation is certainly evident when one surveys the current literature available that focuses on the processes of Islamitic extremization. To date, the predominant focus of this important research has been on the micro social relations and structures that make the development of particular subjectivities probable. Although this mode of inquiry is valuable, there is a danger in overly subjectivizing the process of extremization. As demonstrated through an analysis of the so-called Toronto 18—a group of Islamitic social actors apprehended in June, 2006, for activities that contravened the Canadian Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA)—macro social relations and structures served a significant function in creating the conditions through which the process of extremization becomes probable. In the context of this analysis, the macro social relations and structures that made the ideological conditioning and political transformation of these Islamitic social actors probable include, what is referred to as, the following spheres of influence: Transnational, State, and Group. In effect, these spheres of influence formed a network of scales that converged and condensed in the place-specific context of the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) and facilitated the transgression of some of the actors involved from a Dominant to a Subversive discursive formation and concomitant field of action and practice. However, to develop a greater appreciation for the context within which these processes took place required not only a re-evaluation of the conceptual and terminological tools used to apprehend this phenomenon, but an analysis of the historical processes and forces that made the emergence of particular discursive formations possible. If a comprehensive understanding of the processes of extremization are to be reached and effective counter- terrorism policies developed, the macro social relations and structures that make the emergence of particular extremist subjectivities probable need to be given greater consideration. Ignoring these relations and structures will potentially result in the continuation of counter-productive anti-terrorism policies and counter-terrorism practices which contribute to the oxygen of violence rather than facilitating the de-escalation of extremist activities

Chapter One: Migration and Radicalization in the Age of Covid-19

How do we flatten the radicalization curve? How do we quell the millions of people disaffected by their new societies or by the changes to their old ones? In 2020, with covid-19 running rampant, trends regarding migration and radicalization took a backseat. But migration and the reactions it causes in host societies a critically important issues for our post-pandemic world. As migrants move to new lands, they are subjected to accusations of being radicals and criminals, and are blamed for extremist nationalist violence on the part of their hosts. The politics of migration have pulled some democracies into illiberalism and recent shifts in human geography have the potential to dramatically change many nation-states. Migration will continue to be a major factor in shaping democracies, defining conflicts and reshaping national characters. This book examines radicalization of migrants and their hosts. It traces the process of radicalization among migrants and hosts in multiple milieus (Ch. 2); it explores a broken system of world migration where hosts and migrants fight over rights to land (Ch. 3); it projects into the future, predicting how migration will affect the post- pandemic world (Ch. 4); and it develops policy prescriptions for improving the current system of world migration (Ch. 5). This chapter sets the stage by laying out the debate on migration, the reasons for migration, and the effects of migration on hosts and migrants alike. All of these factors are considered against the setting of covid-19

Data Privacy & National Security: A Rubik’s Cube of Challenges and Opportunities That Are Inextricably Linked

Traditionally, issues relating to information privacy have been viewed in a set of distinct, and not always helpful, stovepipes—or, as my former government colleagues often said, tongue-in-cheek, in other contexts—separate “cylinders of excellence.” Thanks to the convergence of technologies and information, the once-separate realms of personal data privacy, consumer protection, and national security are increasingly interconnected. As Congress and national policymakers consider proposals for federal data privacy legislation, regulation of social media platforms, and how to prevent abuses of foreign intelligence and homeland security powers, they should be examining each of these challenges in light of the others, actively looking for synergies and overlap in the protections they may be considering for protection of personal data, individual privacy, and civil liberties.

Corporate Taxation and the Impact of Governance, Political and Economic Factors

In this paper we first use two international data sets to investigate how governance, political and economic factors influence corporate tax rates. We show that institutional and political factors matter: good governance reduces the tax rate; a parliamentary system, especially a plurality election system, and religious or nationalist executives too, push tax rates upward. Traditional variables also matter: economic openness has a negative effect on tax rates although market size has a positive one. Though it is not robust, interaction among neighbors also plays a role. Then we turn to theory and extend a standard model of tax competition to provide a channel for the elements set forth so far to influence tax rates formation; nested in the economic theory of lobbying that exercise provides our empirical investigation with theoretical foundations.institutions and taxation, tax competition, lobbying

Emerging Risks in the Marine Transportation System (MTS), 2001- 2021

How has maritime security evolved since 2001, and what challenges exist moving forward? This report provides an overview of the current state of maritime security with an emphasis on port security. It examines new risks that have arisen over the last twenty years, the different types of security challenges these risks pose, and how practitioners can better navigate these challenges. Building on interviews with 37 individuals immersed in maritime security protocols, we identify five major challenges in the modern maritime security environment: (1) new domains for exploitation, (2) big data and information processing, (3) attribution challenges, (4) technological innovations, and (5) globalization. We explore how these challenges increase the risk of small-scale, high-probability incidents against an increasingly vulnerable Marine Transportation System (MTS). We conclude by summarizing several measures that can improve resilience-building and mitigate these risks