scholarly journals On using centrality to understand importance of entities in the Panama Papers

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. e0248573
Author(s):  
Mayank Kejriwal

The Panama Papers comprise one of the most recent influential leaks containing detailed information on intermediary companies (such as law firms), offshore entities and company officers, and serve as a valuable source of insight into the operations of (approximately) 214,000 shell companies incorporated in tax havens around the globe over the past half century. Entities and relations in the papers can be used to construct a network that permits, in principle, a systematic and scientific study at scale using techniques developed in the computational social science and network science communities. In this paper, we propose such a study by attempting to quantify and profile the importance of entities. In particular, our research explores whether intermediaries are significantly more influential than offshore entities, and whether different centrality measures lead to varying, or even incompatible, conclusions. Some findings yield conclusions that resemble Simpson’s paradox. We also explore the role that jurisdictions play in determining entity importance.

2020 ◽  
pp. 056943452097425
Author(s):  
Paul W. Grimes ◽  
Franklin G. Mixon

We examined the characteristics of the authors who published academic articles in the Journal of Economic Education ( JEE) during its first 50 years and identify those economists who were most productive in developing economic education as a specialized field. Employing bibliometric data, we review trends in the salient characteristics of authorship with special attention paid to gender, geography, institutional affiliation, and other factors. We also explore the JEE’s impact on the development of teaching-related research through citation analysis over the course of the journal’s various editorial regimes. The results reveal the relative impacts of authors and their economic education scholarship over the past half century and provide some insight into the possible future of the field. JEL Classifications: A20, A14


2012 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Kurzman ◽  
Carl W. Ernst

As in Europe, Islamic studies in the U.S. originated in the tradition of Orientalist scholarship and Christian theology, with its strong textual emphasis, but it has gradually expanded to overlap with Middle East area studies as well as a number of humanistic and social science disciplines, especially religious studies. Over the past several decades, and especially since 9/11, scholarly interest in Islamic studies has mushroomed. This interest is visible in the number of doctoral dissertations produced on Islam and Muslims over the past half-century. As a percentage of all dissertations in the Proquest Dissertations and Theses Database, Islamic studies themes grew from less than one percent prior to the late 1970s to three percent in the 1980s and 1990s, to over four percent since 2001 (see Figure l).


2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-124
Author(s):  
Philip L. Martin

Japan and the United States, the world’s largest economies for most of the past half century, have very different immigration policies. Japan is the G7 economy most closed to immigrants, while the United States is the large economy most open to immigrants. Both Japan and the United States are debating how immigrants are and can con-tribute to the competitiveness of their economies in the 21st centuries. The papers in this special issue review the employment of and impacts of immigrants in some of the key sectors of the Japanese and US economies, including agriculture, health care, science and engineering, and construction and manufacturing. For example, in Japanese agriculture migrant trainees are a fixed cost to farmers during the three years they are in Japan, while US farmers who hire mostly unauthorized migrants hire and lay off workers as needed, making labour a variable cost.


2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 58-66
Author(s):  
Giuliano Pancaldi

Here I survey a sample of the essays and reviews on the sciences of the long eighteenth century published in this journal since it was founded in 1969. The connecting thread is some historiographic reflections on the role that disciplines—in both the sciences we study and the fields we practice—have played in the development of the history of science over the past half century. I argue that, as far as disciplines are concerned, we now find ourselves a bit closer to a situation described in our studies of the long eighteenth century than we were fifty years ago. This should both favor our understanding of that period and, hopefully, make the historical studies that explore it more relevant to present-day developments and science policy. This essay is part of a special issue entitled “Looking Backward, Looking Forward: HSNS at 50,” edited by Erika Lorraine Milam.


1997 ◽  
Vol 36 (4I) ◽  
pp. 321-331
Author(s):  
Sarfraz Khan Qureshi

It is an honour for me as President of the Pakistan Society of Development Economists to welcome you to the 13th Annual General Meeting and Conference of the Society. I consider it a great privilege to do so as this Meeting coincides with the Golden Jubilee celebrations of the state of Pakistan, a state which emerged on the map of the postwar world as a result of the Muslim freedom movement in the Indian Subcontinent. Fifty years to the date, we have been jubilant about it, and both as citizens of Pakistan and professionals in the social sciences we have also been thoughtful about it. We are trying to see what development has meant in Pakistan in the past half century. As there are so many dimensions that the subject has now come to have since its rather simplistic beginnings, we thought the Golden Jubilee of Pakistan to be an appropriate occasion for such stock-taking.


Author(s):  
C. Daniel Batson

This book provides an example of how the scientific method can be used to address a fundamental question about human nature. For centuries—indeed for millennia—the egoism–altruism debate has echoed through Western thought. Egoism says that the motivation for everything we do, including all of our seemingly selfless acts of care for others, is to gain one or another self-benefit. Altruism, while not denying the force of self-benefit, says that under certain circumstances we can care for others for their sakes, not our own. Over the past half-century, social psychologists have turned to laboratory experiments to provide a scientific resolution of this human nature debate. The experiments focused on the possibility that empathic concern—other-oriented emotion elicited by and congruent with the perceived welfare of someone in need—produces altruistic motivation to remove that need. With carefully constructed experimental designs, these psychologists have tested the nature of the motivation produced by empathic concern, determining whether it is egoistic or altruistic. This series of experiments has provided an answer to a fundamental question about what makes us tick. Framed as a detective story, the book traces this scientific search for altruism through the numerous twists and turns that led to the conclusion that empathy-induced altruism is indeed part of our nature. It then examines the implications of this conclusion—negative implications as well as positive—both for our understanding of who we are as humans and for how we might create a more humane society.


Author(s):  
Tim Clydesdale ◽  
Kathleen Garces-Foley

Few realize how much Americans’ journey through their twenties has changed during the past half-century or understand how incorrect popular assumptions about young adults’ religious, spiritual, and secular lives are. Today’s twentysomethings have been labelled the “lost generation”—for their presumed inability to identify and lead fulfilling lives, “kidults”—for their alleged refusal to “grow up” and accept adult responsibilities, and the “least religious generation”—for their purported disinterest in religion and spirituality. These characterizations are not only unflattering, they are deeply flawed. The Twentysomething Soul tells an optimistic story about American twentysomethings. Drawing on hundreds of interviews and a survey of thousands across America, it introduces readers to the full spectrum of American young adults, many of whom live purposefully, responsibly, and reflectively. Some prioritize faith and spirituality. Others reject their childhood religion to explore alternatives and practice a personal spirituality. Still others sideline religion and spirituality until their lives get settled or reject organized religion completely. There is change occurring in the religious and spiritual lives of young adults, but little of it is among the 1 in 4 American twentysomethings who have consistently prioritized religious commitment during the past half-century. The change is rather among the now 3 in 10 young adults who, though intentionally unaffiliated with religion, affirm a variety of religious, spiritual, and secular beliefs. The Twentysomething Soul will change the way readers view contemporary young adults, giving an accurate—and refreshing—understanding of their religious, spiritual, and secular lives.


This is the ninth volume of Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion. As with earlier volumes, these essays follow the tradition of providing a non-sectarian and non-partisan snapshot of the subdiscipline of philosophy of religion. This subdiscipline has become an increasingly important one within philosophy over the last century, and especially over the past half century, having emerged as an identifiable subfield with this timeframe along with other emerging subfields such as the philosophy of science and the philosophy of language. This volume continues the initial intention behind the series of attracting the best work from the premier philosophers of religion, as well as including work by top philosophers outside this area when their work and interests intersect with issues in the philosophy of religion. This inclusive approach to the series provides an opportunity to mitigate some of the costs of greater specialization in our discipline, while at the same time inviting wider interest in the work being done in the philosophy of religion.


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