scholarly journals Characterizing Wealth Inequality in Cryptocurrencies

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashish Rajendra Sai ◽  
Jim Buckley ◽  
Andrew Le Gear
Keyword(s):  
Real World ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Wealth Distribution ◽  
Wealth Inequality ◽  
Security Threat ◽  
Economic Context ◽  
Wealth Concentration ◽  
Open Nature ◽  
Analysis Schema ◽  
Insight Into

Cryptocurrencies often tend to maintain a publically accessible ledger of all transactions. This open nature of the transactional ledger allows us to gain macroeconomic insight into the USD 1 Trillion crypto economy. In this paper, we explore the free market-based economy of eight major cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, Dash, Litecoin, ZCash, Dogecoin, and Ethereum Classic. We specifically focus on the aspect of wealth distribution within these cryptocurrencies as understanding wealth concentration allows us to highlight potential information security implications associated with wealth concentration. We also draw a parallel between the crypto economies and real-world economies. To adequately address these two points, we devise a generic econometric analysis schema for cryptocurrencies. Through this schema, we report on two primary econometric measures: Gini value and Nakamoto Index which report on wealth inequality and 51% wealth concentration respectively. Our analysis reports that, despite the heavy emphasis on decentralization in cryptocurrencies, the wealth distribution remains in-line with the real-world economies, with the exception of Dash. We also report that 3 of the observed cryptocurrencies (Dogecoin, ZCash, and Ethereum Classic) violate the honest majority assumption with less than 100 participants controlling over 51% wealth in the ecosystem, potentially indicating a security threat. This suggests that the free-market fundamentalism doctrine may be inadequate in countering wealth inequality within a crypto-economic context: Algorithmically driven free-market implementation of these cryptocurrencies may eventually lead to wealth inequality similar to those observed in real-world economies.

scholarly journals Accounting for Wealth-Inequality Dynamics: Methods, Estimates, and Simulations for France

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bertrand Garbinti ◽  
Jonathan Goupille-Lebret ◽  
Thomas Piketty
Keyword(s):  
Wealth Distribution ◽  
Asset Price ◽  
House Price ◽  
Wealth Inequality ◽  
National Accounts ◽  
Labor Earnings ◽  
Wealth Concentration ◽  
Simple Simulation ◽  
Steady State Levels ◽  
Savings Rates

Abstract Measuring and understanding the evolution of wealth inequality is a key challenge for researchers, policy makers, and the general public. This paper breaks new ground on this topic by presenting a new method to estimate and study wealth inequality. This method combines fiscal data with household surveys and national accounts in order to provide annual wealth distribution series, with detailed breakdowns by percentiles, age, and assets. Using the case of France as an illustration, we show that the resulting series can be used to better analyze the evolution and the determinants of wealth-inequality dynamics over the 1970–2014 period. We show that the decline in wealth inequality ends in the early 1980s, marking the beginning of a rise in the top 1% wealth share, though with significant fluctuations due largely to asset price movements. Rising inequality in savings rates coupled with highly stratified rates of returns has led to rising wealth concentration in spite of the opposing effect of house price increases. We develop a simple simulation model highlighting how changes in the combination of unequal savings rates, rates of return, and labor earnings that occurred in the early 1980s generated large multiplicative effects that led to radically different steady-state levels of wealth inequality. Taking advantage of the joint distribution of income and wealth, we show that top wealth holders are almost exclusively top capital earners, and increasingly fewer are made up of top labor earners; it has become increasingly difficult in recent decades to access top wealth groups with one's labor income only.

ACCOUNTING REPRESENTATION AND THE SLAVE TRADE: THE GUIDE DU COMMERCE OF GAIGNAT DE L'AULNAIS

2006 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cheryl S. McWatters ◽  
Yannick Lemarchand
Keyword(s):  
International Trade ◽  
Real World ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
French Language ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
Economic Context ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Bear Witness ◽  
Language Literature

The Guide du commerce occupies a distinctive place in the French-language literature on accounting. Passed over by most specialists in the history of maritime trade and the slave trade, the manual has never been the subject of a documented historical study. The apparent realism of the examples, the luxury of details and their precision, all bear witness to a deep concern to go beyond a simple apprenticeship in bookkeeping. Promoting itself essentially as “un guide du commerce,” the volume offers strategic examples for small local businesses, as well as for those engaged in international trade. Yet, the realism also demonstrated the expertise of the author in the eyes of potential purchasers. Inspired by the work of Bottin [2001], we investigate the extent to which the manual reflects real-world practices and provides a faithful glimpse into the socio-economic context of the period. Two additional questions are discussed briefly in our conclusion. First, can the work of Gaignat constitute a source document for the history of la traite négrière? The second entails our early deliberations about the place of this volume in the history of the slave trade itself.

Self-Regulation and Human Progress

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evan Osborne
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Method ◽  
Mutual Influence ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Self Regulation ◽  
Free Expression ◽  
Trial And Error ◽  
Human History ◽  
Economic Context ◽  
The Right ◽  
First Time

Does humanity progress primarily through leaders organizing and directing followers, or through trial and error by individuals free to chart their own path? For most of human history ruling classes had the capacity and the desire to tightly regiment society, to the general detriment of progress. But beginning in the 1500s, Europeans developed a series of arguments for simply leaving well enough alone. First in the form of the scientific method, then in the form of free expression, and finally in the form of the continuously, spontaneously reordered free market, people began to accept that progress is hard, and requires that an immense number of mistakes be tolerated so that we may learn from them. This book tells the story of the development of these three ideas, and for the first time tells of the mutual influence among them. It outlines the rise, and dramatic triumph, of each of these self-regulating systems, followed by a surprising rise in skepticism, especially in the economic context. Such skepticism in the 20th century was frequently costly and sometimes catastrophic. Under the right conditions, which are more frequent than generally believed, self-regulating systems in which participants organize themselves are superior. We should accept their turbulence in exchange for the immense progress they generate.

scholarly journals Land financialisation, planning informalisation and gentrification as statecraft in Antwerp

Urban Studies ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 004209802110282
Author(s):  
Callum Ward
Keyword(s):  
Free Market ◽  
Planning System ◽  
Informal Governance ◽  
Value Capture ◽  
Role Of The State ◽  
Recent Trends ◽  
The City ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Roll Out

This article offers insight into the role of the state in land financialisation through a reading of urban hegemony. This offers the basis for a conjunctural analysis of the politics of planning within a context in which authoritarian neoliberalism is ascendant across Europe. I explore this through the case of Antwerp as it underwent a hegemonic shift in which the nationalist neoliberal party the New Flemish Alliance (Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie; N-VA) ended 70 years of Socialist Party rule and deregulated the city’s technocratic planning system. However, this unbridling of the free market has led to the creation of high-margin investment products rather than suitable housing for the middle classes, raising concerns about the city’s gentrification strategy. The consequent, politicisation of the city’s planning system led to controversy over clientelism which threatened to undermine the N-VA’s wider hegemonic project. In response, the city has sought to roll out a more formalised system of negotiated developer obligations, so embedding transactional, market-oriented informal governance networks at the centre of the planning system. This article highlights how the literature on land financialisation may incorporate conjunctural analysis, in the process situating recent trends towards the use of land value capture mechanisms within the contradictions and statecraft of contemporary neoliberal urbanism.

scholarly journals Discovering Key Topics From Short, Real-World Medical Inquiries via Natural Language Processing

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Ziletti ◽  
C. Berns ◽  
O. Treichel ◽  
T. Weber ◽  
J. Liang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Language Processing ◽  
Real World ◽  
Medical Information ◽  
Pharmaceutical Companies ◽  
Medicinal Products ◽  
Medical Treatments ◽  
Key Topics ◽  
Linear Dimensionality Reduction ◽  
Improving Patient Care ◽  
Insight Into

Millions of unsolicited medical inquiries are received by pharmaceutical companies every year. It has been hypothesized that these inquiries represent a treasure trove of information, potentially giving insight into matters regarding medicinal products and the associated medical treatments. However, due to the large volume and specialized nature of the inquiries, it is difficult to perform timely, recurrent, and comprehensive analyses. Here, we combine biomedical word embeddings, non-linear dimensionality reduction, and hierarchical clustering to automatically discover key topics in real-world medical inquiries from customers. This approach does not require ontologies nor annotations. The discovered topics are meaningful and medically relevant, as judged by medical information specialists, thus demonstrating that unsolicited medical inquiries are a source of valuable customer insights. Our work paves the way for the machine-learning-driven analysis of medical inquiries in the pharmaceutical industry, which ultimately aims at improving patient care.

scholarly journals Twitter content classification

First Monday ◽  
2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Dann
Keyword(s):  
Grounded Theory ◽  
Real World ◽  
Classification Scheme ◽  
Theory Analysis ◽  
The Real ◽  
Real World Application ◽  
Classification Framework ◽  
Content Classification ◽  
Insight Into

This paper delivers a new Twitter content classification framework based sixteen existing Twitter studies and a grounded theory analysis of a personal Twitter history. It expands the existing understanding of Twitter as a multifunction tool for personal, profession, commercial and phatic communications with a split level classification scheme that offers broad categorization and specific sub categories for deeper insight into the real world application of the service.

scholarly journals Wealth Disparities Before and After the Great Recession

2013 ◽  
Vol 650 (1) ◽  
pp. 98-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabian T. Pfeffer ◽  
Sheldon Danziger ◽  
Robert F. Schoeni
Keyword(s):  
Great Recession ◽  
Wealth Distribution ◽  
Wealth Inequality ◽  
Longitudinal Analyses ◽  
Minority Status ◽  
Socioeconomic Groups ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Substantial Rise ◽  
American Families

The collapse of the labor, housing, and stock markets beginning in 2007 created unprecedented challenges for American families. This study examines disparities in wealth holdings leading up to the Great Recession and during the first years of the recovery. All socioeconomic groups experienced declines in wealth following the recession, with higher wealth families experiencing larger absolute declines. In percentage terms, however, the declines were greater for less advantaged groups as measured by minority status, education, and prerecession income and wealth, leading to a substantial rise in wealth inequality in just a few years. Despite large changes in wealth, longitudinal analyses demonstrate little change in mobility in the ranking of particular families in the wealth distribution. Between 2007 and 2011, one-fourth of American families lost at least 75 percent of their wealth, and more than half of all families lost at least 25 percent of their wealth. Multivariate longitudinal analyses document that these large relative losses were disproportionally concentrated among lower-income, less educated, and minority households.

scholarly journals Collaborative learning experiences of fourth-year students in a social work module

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 52-68
Author(s):  
Erica Pretorius ◽  
Hanna Nel
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Social Work ◽  
Collaborative Learning ◽  
Real World ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Learning Task ◽  
Problem Solving Skills ◽  
Innovative Thinking ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Real World Problems

This article provides insight into a fourth-year social work module, integrating an authentic learning task. This task focused on the development of a funding proposal for a social service organization. It attempted to integrate collaborative learning by scaffolding students’ participation in the world of work, rather than just receiving a qualification. In view of the prevalent conversation around the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the Covid-19 pandemic, it is essential that lecturers at higher education institutions embrace collaborative and problem-solving skills for student tasks. Recent evidence suggests that higher education graduates’ learning and their readiness for work in a professional environment require a greater focus on creative and innovative thinking to solve real-world problems. The results from this qualitative investigation revealed that students found working in teams and collaborating with their peers both challenging and rewarding. This process contributed to the holistic development of social workers ready to work in the real-world.

Mining Sport Activities

2019 ◽  
pp. 610-621
Author(s):  
Iztok Fister Jr. ◽  
Iztok Fister
Keyword(s):  
Data Mining ◽  
Real World ◽  
Healthy Lifestyle ◽  
Smart Phones ◽  
The Other ◽  
Training Data ◽  
Stress Relieving ◽  
Sport Activities ◽  
Future Potential ◽  
Insight Into

For many people, sport is one of the stress-relieving activities. People being involved with sport wish to achieve attractive shape, healthy lifestyle, lose weight, and so on. However, there are also people who deal with sport because of competition goals. In order to fulfill their competition goals, they need to train properly. Even for professionals, it is very hard to perform a serious training. On the other hand, recent expansion of smart sport watches and even smart phones allow athletes to train smarter. During the months and years, they produce dozens of activity files. These files offer thousands of opportunities for data mining approaches, where athletes gained a deep insight into their training data. Data mining approaches are able to extract habits of athletes, help to prevent over-training syndrome and injuries, clustering similar activities together, and much more. In this chapter, the authors show opportunities for data mining, enumerate recent applications, and outline future potential for research and applications in the real world.

A Thorough Insight into Theoretical and Practical Developments in MultiAgent Systems

2020 ◽  
pp. 83-111
Author(s):  
Dimple Juneja ◽  
Aarti Singh ◽  
Rashmi Singh ◽  
Saurabh Mukherjee
Keyword(s):  
Multiagent Systems ◽  
Real World ◽  
Research Community ◽  
Theoretical Design ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Universal Applicability ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Real World Problems

Multiagent systems have been a fascination for research community and are often seen as an intelligent solution to many complex real world problems. Researchers have been active in the domain since last three decades and many developments pertaining to theoretical design and practical developments of multiagent systems are worth appreciating. The growth in MAS is multidirectional ranging from conceptual ideas to practical implementations and from the wide range of applications; it appears that multiagent systems are proving to be universal. The paper presents a concise survey of developments in MAS highlighting the important contributions in the field and also questions the universal applicability of agents.

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