Erstellt am: 25. 10. 2011 - 11:09 Uhr

Today's Webtip: They Rule

but who are they? Time for a scientific approach to the answer.

New Scientist reported an a rather interesting paper from the ETH Zürich. Stefania Vitali, James B. Glattfelder, and Stefano Battiston analyzed the structure of the control network of transnational corporations.

The results?

Probably aren't all that surprising. Loads of money and influence concentrated in a relatively small number of massive companies. To quote from the paper:

"So far, only small national samples were studied and there was
no appropriate methodology to assess control globally. We present the first investigation of the architecture of the international ownership network, along with the computation of the control held by each global player. We find that transnational corporations form a giant bow-tie structure and that a large portion of control flows to a small tightly-knit core of financial institutions. This core can be seen as an economic “super-entity” that raises new important issues both for researchers and policy makers."

What follows is a network analysis, featuring funky graphics and numbers. I will spare you my interpretation, since I am still working through it, and it would be meaningless anyway. The News Scientist is a better place to get that kind of thing. And for those of you who want the paper itself.

Here you go (it's a pdf).

And don't forget about TheyRule.net. That's always a fun stop.