0000000000470731
AUTHOR
Stefano Battiston
The Community Structure of the Global Corporate Network
We investigate the community structure of the global ownership network of transnational corporations. We find a pronounced organization in communities that cannot be explained by randomness. Despite the global character of this network, communities reflect first of all the geographical location of firms, while the industrial sector plays only a marginal role. We also analyze the network in which the nodes are the communities and the links are obtained by aggregating the links among firms belonging to pairs of communities. We analyze the network centrality of the top 50 communities and we provide the first quantitative assessment of the financial sector role in connecting the global economy.
Financial Fragility and Distress Propagation in a Network of Regions
Building on previous works on business fluctuations, we model the propagation of financial distress in a network of regions, each populated by heterogeneous interacting firms and banks. In order to diversify risk, firm sell goods outside their own region and borrow from banks located there. However, this results in ties across regions which propagate financial distress across regional borders. We investigate how the average level of economic integration affects the probability of both individual and systemic failures. We find that the benefit of greater diversification is eventually offset by the effect of financial acceleration and contagion. In particular, beyond a certain level of integr…
Geography versus topology in the European Ownership Network
In this paper, we investigate the network of ownership relationships among European firms and its embedding in the geographical space. We carry out a detailed analysis of geographical distances between pairs of nodes, connected by edges or by shortest paths of varying length. In particular, we study the relation between geographical distance and network distance in comparison with a random spatial network model. While the distribution of geographical distance can be fairly well reproduced, important deviations appear in the network distance and in the size of the largest strongly connected component. Our results show that geographical factors allow us to capture several features of the netw…
The network of global corporate control.
The structure of the control network of transnational corporations affects global market competition and financial stability. 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 make…
The Structure of Financial Networks
We present here an overview of the use of networks in Finance and Economics. We show how this approach enables us to address important questions as, for example, the structure of control chains in financial systems, the systemic risk associated with them and the evolution of trade between nations. All these results are new in the field and allow for a better understanding and modelling of different economic systems.
The community structure of the global corporate network.
We investigate the community structure of the global ownership network of transnational corporations. We find a pronounced organization in communities that cannot be explained by randomness. Despite the global character of this network, communities reflect first of all the geographical location of firms, while the industrial sector plays only a marginal role. We also analyze the network in which the nodes are the communities and the links are obtained by aggregating the links among firms belonging to pairs of communities. We analyze the network centrality of the top 50 communities and we provide the first quantitative assessment of the financial sector role in connecting the global economy.