[W]hat Lies Beneath: Using Latent Networks to Improve Spatial Predictions

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cassy Dorff ◽  
Max Gallop ◽  
Shahryar Minhas
Keyword(s):  
Predictive Performance ◽  
Civil Conflict ◽  
Connectivity Matrix ◽  
Network Approach ◽  
Intrastate Conflict ◽  
Spatial Lag ◽  
Data Generating Process ◽  
Do So

Abstract Spatial interdependencies commonly drive the spread of violence in civil conflict. To address such interdependence, scholars often use spatial lags to model the diffusion of violence, but this requires an explicit operationalization of the connectivity matrices that represent the spread of conflict. Unfortunately, in many cases, there are multiple competing processes that facilitate the spread of violence making it difficult to identify the true data-generating process. We show how a network-driven methodology can allow us to account for the spread of violence, even in the cases where we cannot directly measure the factors that drive diffusion. To do so, we estimate a latent connectivity matrix that captures a variety of possible diffusion patterns. We use this procedure to study intrastate conflict in eight conflict-prone countries and show how our framework enables substantially better predictive performance than canonical spatial-lag measures. We also investigate the circumstances under which canonical spatial lags suffice and those under which a latent network approach is beneficial.

The Arc of Modernization: Economic Structure, Materialism, and the Onset of Civil Conflict

2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-252 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Tyson Chatagnier ◽  
Emanuele Castelli
Keyword(s):  
World Bank ◽  
Economic Structure ◽  
Civil Conflict ◽  
The State ◽  
Intrastate Conflict ◽  
State Revenue ◽  
Strategic Model ◽  
Modernization Process ◽  
The Cost

The onset of intrastate conflict has two requisite conditions: that prospective insurgents have an incentive to rebel, and that the state lacks the capacity to deter such a rebellion. We outline a simple rationalist argument grounded in gains from economic growth—to both individual income and state revenue—to argue that modernization has the potential to affect the likelihood of civil conflict through both of these conditions. The shift away from a rent-seeking economy affects opportunity costs for rebellion by increasing the cost of recruitment, broadening the time horizon for gain, and decreasing looting possibilities. On the state side, modernization increases state military, economic, and institutional capacity, allowing governments to deter rebellion. We construct an index of modernization from World Bank data and apply a strategic model to explore the effect of modernization on both states and rebels simultaneously. We find that the modernization process describes an arc that may increase the likelihood of unrest in the early stages, but has long-term stabilizing effects.

scholarly journals Modeling Asymmetric Relationships from Symmetric Networks

2018 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-236
Author(s):  
Arturas Rozenas ◽  
Shahryar Minhas ◽  
John Ahlquist
Keyword(s):  
Predictive Performance ◽  
Relevant Information ◽  
Directed Network ◽  
Simulation Studies ◽  
Investment Treaty ◽  
Data Generating Process ◽  
Alternative Approaches ◽  
Asymmetric Relationships ◽  
Mutual Agreement ◽  
Symmetric Networks

Many bilateral relationships requiring mutual agreement produce observable networks that are symmetric (undirected). However, the unobserved, asymmetric (directed) network is frequently the object of scientific interest. We propose a method that probabilistically reconstructs the latent, asymmetric network from the observed, symmetric graph in a regression-based framework. We apply this model to the bilateral investment treaty network. Our approach successfully recovers the true data generating process in simulation studies, extracts new, politically relevant information about the network structure inaccessible to alternative approaches, and has superior predictive performance.

Armed politics and the study of intrastate conflict

2017 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 459-467 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Staniland
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
Research Agenda ◽  
Civil Conflict ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
Intrastate Conflict ◽  
Group Interactions ◽  
Armed Group ◽  
Rebel Governance ◽  
State Group ◽  
Existing Data

Though the two are often conflated, violence is not identical to conflict. This article makes the case for studying state-armed group interactions across space, time, and levels of violence as part of an ‘armed politics’ approach to conflict. It conceptualizes and measures armed orders of alliance, limited cooperation, and military hostilities, and the termination of these orders in collapse or incorporation. The article applies this framework to four contexts in South Asia. It measures armed orders across five groups and six decades in Nagaland in India, and then offers a briefer overview of state-group armed orders in Karachi in Pakistan, Mizoram in India, and Wa areas of northern Burma/Myanmar. Examining armed politics improves our understanding of ceasefires and peace deals, rebel governance, and group emergence and collapse, among other important topics. This approach complements existing data on civil conflict while identifying a new empirical research agenda and policy implications.

Eigenvector Rotation as an Estimation of Architectural Change

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andy Dong ◽  
Somwrita Sarkar ◽  
Marie-Lise Moullec ◽  
Marija Jankovic
Keyword(s):  
System Architecture ◽  
Modular System ◽  
Connectivity Matrix ◽  
Present System ◽  
System Architectures ◽  
Architectural Change ◽  
Technical Innovations ◽  
Performance Gains ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Do So

Many important technical innovations occur through changes to existing system architectures. To manage the balance between performance gains by the innovation and the risk of change, companies estimate the degree of architectural change an innovation option could cause due to change propagation throughout the entire system. To do so, they must evaluate the innovation options for their integration cost given the present system architecture. This article presents a new algorithm and metrics based upon eigenvector rotations of the architectural connectivity matrix to assess the sensitivity of a system architecture to introduced innovations, modelled as perturbations on the system. The article presents studies of the impact of changes on synthetic system architectures to validate the method. The results show that there is no single architecture that is the most amenable to introduced innovation. Properties such as the density of existing connections and the number of changes that modify intra- or inter-module connections can introduce global effects that are not known in advance. Hierarchical modular system architectures tend to be relatively stable to introduced innovations and distributed changes to any architecture tends to cause the largest eigenvector rotations.

scholarly journals Unveiling socioeconomic differences in colombia by means of urban mobility complex networks

Memorias ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 80-86
Author(s):  
Laura Lotero ◽  
Rafael Hurtado Heredia ◽  
Patricia Jaramillo Álvarez
Keyword(s):  
Complex Networks ◽  
Social Stratification ◽  
Directed Network ◽  
Socioeconomic Differences ◽  
Urban Mobility ◽  
Topological Properties ◽  
Network Approach ◽  
Structural Differences ◽  
Socioeconomic Strata ◽  
Do So

Social stratification lead to marked differences between people in several aspects of their lives, such as income, education, work, welfare and mobility. Here, we aim to analyze urban mobility by socioeconomic differences of travelers. In order to do so, we represent urban mobility by a complex network approach. We show that the topological properties of the networks allow to characterize mobility flows and to recognize differences in the dynamics of socioeconomic strata. We use data from origin destination surveys made for the two most populated cities in Colombia and we represent it in the form of a weighted and directed network. We found that urban mobility networks have structural differences if analyzed by socioeconomic strata of the population and unveil segregation patterns in the highest and lowest income strata.

scholarly journals Every Story Has a Beginning, Middle, and an End (But Not Always in That Order): Predicting Duration Dynamics in a Unified Framework

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 515-541 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daina Chiba ◽  
Nils W. Metternich ◽  
Michael D. Ward
Keyword(s):  
Civil Conflict ◽  
Empirical Models ◽  
Unified Framework ◽  
Fundamental Idea ◽  
Civil Conflicts ◽  
The Past ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Data Generating Process ◽  
Conflict Duration

There are three fundamental duration dynamics of civil conflicts: time until conflict onset, conflict duration, and time until conflict recurrence. Theoretical and empirical models of war usually focus on one or at most two aspects of these three important duration dynamics. We present a new split-population seemingly unrelated duration estimator that treats pre-conflict duration, conflict duration, and post-conflict duration as interdependent processes thus permitting improved predictions about the onset, duration, and recurrence of civil conflict. Our findings provide support for the more fundamental idea that prediction is dependent on a good approximation of the theoretically implied underlying data-generating process. In addition, we account for the fact that some countries might never experience these duration dynamics or become immune after experiencing them in the past.

scholarly journals The significance of the interconnection of second-level cooperatives and their peer-associated cooperatives for productivity growth

2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. e0103 ◽  
Author(s):  
María Martínez-Victoria ◽  
MariLuz Maté-Sánchez-Val ◽  
Narciso Arcas-Lario
Keyword(s):  
Market Orientation ◽  
Productivity Growth ◽  
Spatial Econometrics ◽  
Connectivity Matrix ◽  
Food Sector ◽  
Food Markets ◽  
Positive Interaction ◽  
Spatial Connectivity ◽  
Productive Growth ◽  
Do So

Cooperatives are especially important in current agri-food markets. These companies have responded to the current demand requirements with greater market orientation strategies to attract and satisfy customers. To do so, cooperatives have adopted different collaboration alternatives. In Spain, the most common alliance between cooperatives is materialised in second-level cooperatives, which are cooperatives integrated by at least two first-level cooperatives. The aim of this study was to analyse the interaction effects between first- and second level agri-food cooperatives on their productive growth and its components. To get this purpose, a Cobb-Douglas specification with spatial econometrics techniques was applied to evaluate this relationship. We included a spatial connectivity matrix to establish the interconnection among cooperatives of first- and second-level. Our results show a positive interaction effect highlighting the importance of these alliances on the productivity growth in the agri-food sector. The scarce amount of empirical papers explaining how second-level cooperatives influence the performance of first-level cooperatives shows the relevance of our study.

scholarly journals Realized Volatility Forecasting with Neural Networks

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 502-531
Author(s):  
Andrea Bucci
Keyword(s):  
Neural Networks ◽  
Short Term Memory ◽  
Predictive Performance ◽  
Econometric Methods ◽  
Forecasting Method ◽  
Data Generating Process ◽  
Narx Models ◽  
Lstm Network ◽  
Nonlinear Behaviors ◽  
Nonlinear Autoregressive

Abstract In the last few decades, a broad strand of literature in finance has implemented artificial neural networks as a forecasting method. The major advantage of this approach is the possibility to approximate any linear and nonlinear behaviors without knowing the structure of the data generating process. This makes it suitable for forecasting time series which exhibit long-memory and nonlinear dependencies, like conditional volatility. In this article, the predictive performance of feed-forward and recurrent neural networks (RNNs) was compared, particularly focusing on the recently developed long short-term memory (LSTM) network and nonlinear autoregressive model process with eXogenous input (NARX) network, with traditional econometric approaches. The results show that RNNs are able to outperform all the traditional econometric methods. Additionally, capturing long-range dependence through LSTM and NARX models seems to improve the forecasting accuracy also in a highly volatile period.

Financing rebellion

2017 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-230 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ursula Daxecker ◽  
Brandon C Prins
Keyword(s):  
Niger Delta ◽  
Predictive Performance ◽  
Civil Conflict ◽  
Resource Extraction ◽  
Maritime Piracy ◽  
Resource Conflict ◽  
Dynamic Factors ◽  
Out Of Sample ◽  
Predictive Assessments ◽  
Conflict Intensity

A prominent explanation of the resource–conflict relationship suggests that natural resources finance rebellion by permitting rebel leaders the opportunity to purchase weapons, fighters, and local support. The bunkering of oil in the Niger Delta by quasi-criminal syndicates is an example of how the black-market selling of stolen oil may help finance anti-state groups. More systematic assessments have also shown that the risk and duration of conflict increases in the proximity of oil and diamond deposits. Yet despite the emphasis on rebel resource extraction in these arguments, empirical assessments rely almost exclusively on latent resource availability rather than actual resource extraction. Focusing on maritime piracy, this article argues that piracy is a funding strategy neglected in current research. Anecdotal evidence connects piracy in the Greater Gulf of Aden to arms trafficking, the drug trade, and human slavery. The revenue from attacks may find its way to Al-Shabaab. In Nigeria, increasing attacks against oil transports may signal an effort by insurgents to use the profits from piracy as an additional revenue stream to fund their campaign against the Nigerian government. The article hypothesizes that piracy incidents, that is, actual acts of looting, increase the intensity of civil conflict. Using inferential statistics and predictive assessments, our evidence from conflicts in coastal African and Southeast Asian states from 1993 to 2010 shows that maritime piracy increases conflict intensity, and that the inclusion of dynamic factors helps improve the predictive performance of empirical models of conflict events in in-sample and out-of-sample forecasts.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document