10 research outputs found
Where is the global corporate elite? A large-scale network study of local and nonlocal interlocking directorates
Algorithms and the Foundations of Software technolog
Uncovering Offshore Financial Centers: Conduits and Sinks in the Global Corporate Ownership Network
Multinational corporations use highly complex structures of parents and
subsidiaries to organize their operations and ownership. Offshore Financial
Centers (OFCs) facilitate these structures through low taxation and lenient
regulation, but are increasingly under scrutiny, for instance for enabling tax
avoidance. Therefore, the identification of OFC jurisdictions has become a
politicized and contested issue. We introduce a novel data-driven approach for
identifying OFCs based on the global corporate ownership network, in which over
98 million firms (nodes) are connected through 71 million ownership relations.
This granular firm-level network data uniquely allows identifying both
sink-OFCs and conduit-OFCs. Sink-OFCs attract and retain foreign capital while
conduit-OFCs are attractive intermediate destinations in the routing of
international investments and enable the transfer of capital without taxation.
We identify 24 sink-OFCs. In addition, a small set of five countries -- the
Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Singapore and Switzerland -- canalize
the majority of corporate offshore investment as conduit-OFCs. Each conduit
jurisdiction is specialized in a geographical area and there is significant
specialization based on industrial sectors. Against the idea of OFCs as exotic
small islands that cannot be regulated, we show that many sink and conduit-OFCs
are highly developed countries
The promise and perils of using big data in the study of corporate networks: problems, diagnostics and fixes
Network data on connections among corporate actors and entities – for instance through co-ownership ties or elite social networks – is increasingly available to researchers interested in probing many important questions related to the study of modern capitalism. We discuss the promise and perils of using Big Corporate Network Data (BCND) given the analytical challenges associated with the nature of the subject matter, variable data quality, and other problems associated with currently available data at this scale. We propose a standard process for how researchers can deal with BCND problems. While acknowledging that different research questions require different approaches to data quality, we offer a schematic platform that researchers can follow to make informed and intelligent decisions about BCND issues and address these issues through a specific work-flow procedure. Within each step in this procedure, we provide a set of best practices for how to identify, resolve, and minimize BCND problems that arise
BRICS and the New American Imperialism
"BRICS is a grouping of the five major emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Volume five in the Democratic Marxism series, BRICS and the New American Imperialism challenges the mainstream understanding of BRICS and US dominance to situate the new global rivalries engulfing capitalism. It offers novel analyses of BRICS in the context of increasing US induced imperial chaos, deepening environmental crisis tendencies (such as climate change and water scarcity), contradictory dynamics inside BRICS countries and growing subaltern resistance.
The authors revisit contemporary thinking on imperialism and anti-imperialism, drawing on the work of Rosa Luxemburg, one of the leading theorists after Marx, who attempted to understand the expansionary nature of capitalism from the heartlands to the peripheries. The richness of Luxemburg’s pioneering work inspires most of the volume’s contributors in their analyses of the dangerous contradictions of the contemporary world as well as forms of democratic agency advancing resistance.
While various forms of resistance are highlighted, among them water protests, mass worker strikes, anti-corporate campaigning and forms of cultural critique, this volume grapples with the challenge of renewing anti-imperialism beyond the NGO-driven World Social Forum and considers the prospects of a new horizontal political vessel to build global convergence. It also explores the prospects of a Fifth International of Peoples and Workers.