853 research outputs found
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
An axisymmetric time-domain spectral-element method for full-wave simulations: Application to ocean acoustics
The numerical simulation of acoustic waves in complex 3D media is a key topic
in many branches of science, from exploration geophysics to non-destructive
testing and medical imaging. With the drastic increase in computing
capabilities this field has dramatically grown in the last twenty years.
However many 3D computations, especially at high frequency and/or long range,
are still far beyond current reach and force researchers to resort to
approximations, for example by working in 2D (plane strain) or by using a
paraxial approximation. This article presents and validates a numerical
technique based on an axisymmetric formulation of a spectral finite-element
method in the time domain for heterogeneous fluid-solid media. Taking advantage
of axisymmetry enables the study of relevant 3D configurations at a very
moderate computational cost. The axisymmetric spectral-element formulation is
first introduced, and validation tests are then performed. A typical
application of interest in ocean acoustics showing upslope propagation above a
dipping viscoelastic ocean bottom is then presented. The method correctly
models backscattered waves and explains the transmission losses discrepancies
pointed out in Jensen et al. (2007). Finally, a realistic application to a
double seamount problem is considered.Comment: Added a reference, and fixed a typo (cylindrical versus spherical
Electric Vehicle Procurement Decisions in Fleets : Results of a Case Study in South-Western Germany
In order to increase the market share of electric vehicles (EV) in Germany, further insights on actors and structures of EV specific procurement decisions for fleets are necessary. Our analysis focuses on vehicles registered by companies/organizations as they dominate new vehicle registrations in Germany. The following question is examined empirically: Which departments influence EV procurement decisions in small and medium-sized enterprises (SME), in large-scale enterprises (LSE) and in public organizations (PO) and what are the differences compared to these departments' influences on internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEV) procurement decisions? Our results show that EV procurement decisions of organizations in South-West Germany are decisively influenced by upper management levels and partly by organizations' fleet management departments. In small and medium-sized enterprises sales- and public relations departments have a major influence on EV procurement decisions. These findings are important for stakeholders interested in selling EVs or in designing policies that are more effective in influencing organizations' decision making concerning future EV procurement decisions
Uptake, biodistribution, and time course of naked plasmid DNA trafficking after intratumoral in vivo jet injection
Nonviral jet injection is an applicable technology for in vivo gene transfer of naked DNA. However, little is known about the biodistribution and clearance of jet-injected DNA, or about its localization within tissue and cells. Therefore, in this study we analyzed the intratumoral and systemic biodistribution of jet-injected naked DNA in human colon carcinoma-bearing NCr-nu/nu mice, which were jet-injected with the pCMVbeta plasmid DNA. Intratumoral and systemic plasmid DNA biodistribution was analyzed 5, 10, 20, and 40 min and 3, 6, 24, 48, and 72 hr after jet injection, using quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction. In the tumors, a rapid drop in naked DNA load within 24 hr of jet injection was shown. Detailed analysis of intratumoral distribution of rhodamine-labeled DNA revealed the presence of plasmid DNA within tumor cells 5 min after jet injection and further accumulation of significant DNA amounts in the cell nuclei 30 to 60 min after jet injection. In the blood, DNA amounts rapidly dropped within 10 to 40 min of jet injection to less than 0.001 pg of plasmid per 250 ng of tissue DNA and only minimal plasmid DNA dissemination was detected in liver, lung, spleen, kidney, and ovaries, which was cleared 3 to 6 hr after jet injection. By contrast, in heart, bone marrow, and brain almost no plasmid DNA was detectable
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