Social Network Analysis

https://www.cell.com/neuron/pdf/S0896-6273(11)00792-6.pdf

Functional network organization of the human brain

Machine learning approaches are increasingly used to extract patterns and insights from the ever-increasing stream of geospatial data, but current approaches may not be optimal when system behaviour is dominated by spatial or temporal context. Here, rather than amending classical machine learning, we argue that these contextual cues should be used as part of deep learning (an approach that is able to extract spatio-temporal features automatically) to gain further process understanding of Earth system science problems, improving the predictive ability of seasonal forecasting and modelling of long-range spatial connections across multiple timescales, for example. The next step will be a hybrid modelling approach, coupling physical process models with the versatility of data-driven machine learning.

/pdf/deep-learning-and-process-understanding-for-data-driven-3so9cx99my.pdf

Deep learning and process understanding for data-driven Earth system science

https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/99175/Hanlon_A%20review%20of%20tax%20research.pdf;sequence=1

A review of tax research

The offshore tax haven affiliates of American corporations account for more than a quarter of US foreign investment, an nearly a third of the foreign profits of US firms. This paper analyzes the origins of this tax haven activity and its implications for the US and foreign governments. Based on the behavior of US fins in 1982, it appears that American companies report extraordinarily high profit rates on both their real and their financial investments in tax havens. We calculate from this behavior that the tax rate that maximizes tax revenue for a typical haven is around 6%. The revenue implications for the US are more complicated, since tax havens may ultimately enhance the ability of the US government to tax the foreign earnings of American companies.

Fiscal Paradise: Foreign Tax Havens and American Business

https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w0689/w0689.pdf

Tax policy and foreign direct investment

This paper provides some evidence on one aspect of international investment, the impacts of domestic tax policy on foreign direct investment in the United States. The possible impacts, which are discussed in the first section, are complex. For example, an investment incentive which applies to both domestic and foreign investors would be expected to result in an increased foreign investment in the U.S. On the other hand, a savings incentive, which has no direct impact on foreign investors, would nevertheless tend to increase domestic investors' demand for capital assets, thereby driving down the returns expected by foreign investors and possibly resulting in significant decreases in foreign investment. Because of measurement difficulties, we are only partly successful in obtaining precise estimates of this sort of impact. However, the results we do obtain suggest that foreign investment in the U.S. is strongly affected, in the manner predicted, by changes in domestic tax policy.

Tax Policy and Foreign Direct Investment in the United States

This paper examines the implications of the most common system of taxing foreign source income. It is argued that, because the repatriation of earnings to the home country investor and not the earnings themselves are typically the source of tax liability, the foreign source income tax should affect foreign investment differently depending on the required transfers of funds within the firm. One implication of viewing the tax in this fashion is that in order to maximize after tax profits, a firm should finance its foreign investment out of foreign earnings to the greatest extent possible. That is, a firm's required foreign return jumps at the point at which desired foreign investment just exhausts foreign earnings. This allows us to draw a distinction between "mature" foreign operations, which are at any point in time financed at the margin by reinvested earnings (and perhaps also pay dividends to their: parent firm in the home country), and "immature" foreign affiliates, which rely on funding from their parents (and should not be paying dividends). It is noted that survey evidence on multinational firm behavior is consistent with this distinction. Direct investment data indicate that mature foreign operations probably account for nearly ninety percent of U. S. foreign direct investment. The discussion then turns to investment incentives. It is shown that the home country's rate of tax on foreign source income and the presence or absence of a foreign tax credit should be irrelevant to a mature foreign operation's investment and dividend decisions. This conclusion, which conflicts sharply with the conventional wisdom, follows because the home country tax acts as an unavoidable cost. New firms' investment decisions are, on the other hand, influenced by home country taxes.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/nber_w0689.pdf?abstractid=349088&mirid=1&type=2

Tax Policy and Foreign Direct Investment

This paper provides an analysis of and some evidence relating to the influence of domestic tax policy on foreign direct investment in the United States. First, the potential effects of tax policy a...

/pdf/tax-policy-and-foreign-direct-investment-in-the-united-4109rwxqtm.pdf

Identifying regions important for spreading and mediating perturbations is crucial to assess the susceptibilities of spatio-temporal complex systems such as the Earth's climate to volcanic eruptions, extreme events or geoengineering. Here a data-driven approach is introduced based on a dimension reduction, causal reconstruction, and novel network measures based on causal effect theory that go beyond standard complex network tools by distinguishing direct from indirect pathways. Applied to a data set of atmospheric dynamics, the method identifies several strongly uplifting regions acting as major gateways of perturbations spreading in the atmosphere. Additionally, the method provides a stricter statistical approach to pathways of atmospheric teleconnections, yielding insights into the Pacific-Indian Ocean interaction relevant for monsoonal dynamics. Also for neuroscience or power grids, the novel causal interaction perspective provides a complementary approach to simulations or experiments for understanding the functioning of complex spatio-temporal systems with potential applications in increasing their resilience to shocks or extreme events.

/pdf/identifying-causal-gateways-and-mediators-in-complex-spatio-3fesb9zddc.pdf

David Hartman

Papers

Tax policy and foreign direct investment

Tax Policy and Foreign Direct Investment in the United States

Tax Policy and Foreign Direct Investment

Tax Policy and Foreign Direct Investment in the United States

Identifying causal gateways and mediators in complex spatio-temporal systems.