City University London

About: City University London is a education organization based out in London, United Kingdom. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Context (language use). The organization has 5735 authors who have published 17285 publications receiving 453290 citations.

Mapping the NFT revolution: market trends, trade networks, and visual features.

Abstract: Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs) are digital assets that represent objects like art, collectible, and in-game items. They are traded online, often with cryptocurrency, and are generally encoded within smart contracts on a blockchain. Public attention towards NFTs has exploded in 2021, when their market has experienced record sales, but little is known about the overall structure and evolution of its market. Here, we analyse data concerning 6.1 million trades of 4.7 million NFTs between June 23, 2017 and April 27, 2021, obtained primarily from Ethereum and WAX blockchains. First, we characterize statistical properties of the market. Second, we build the network of interactions, show that traders typically specialize on NFTs associated with similar objects and form tight clusters with other traders that exchange the same kind of objects. Third, we cluster objects associated to NFTs according to their visual features and show that collections contain visually homogeneous objects. Finally, we investigate the predictability of NFT sales using simple machine learning algorithms and find that sale history and, secondarily, visual features are good predictors for price. We anticipate that these findings will stimulate further research on NFT production, adoption, and trading in different contexts.

A new global research agenda for food

Abstract: Lawrence Haddad, Corinna Hawkes and colleagues propose ten ways to shift the focus from feeding people to nourishing them.

Credit ratings failures and policy options

Abstract: This paper examines the role of credit rating agencies in the subprime crisis that triggered the 2007–2008 financial turmoil. We focus on two aspects of ratings that contributed to the boom and bust of the market for structured debt: rating inflation and coarse information disclosure. The paper discusses how regulation can be designed to mitigate these problems in the future. Our preferred policy is to require rating agencies to be paid by investors rather than by issuers and to grant open and free access to data about the loans or securities underlying structured debt products. A more modest (but less effective) approach would be to retain the ‘issuer pays’ model but require issuers to pay an upfront fee irrespective of the rating, ban ‘credit shopping’, and prescribe a more complete format for the information that rating agencies must disseminate. — Marco Pagano and Paolo Volpin

Reflecting on the experience of interviewing online: perspectives from the Internet and HIV study in London.

Abstract: This paper considers some of the strengths and weaknesses of conducting synchronous online interviews for qualitative research. It is based on a study among gay/bisexual men that used both qualitative and quantitative methods to explore the association between seeking sex through the Internet and HIV transmission risk. Between June 2002 and January 2004, 128 gay/bisexual men living in London were interviewed one-to-one by the first author (MD) about their experience of using the Internet to find sexual partners and negotiating condom use for anal sex. Thirty-five men were interviewed online, while 93 were interviewed face-to-face (i.e. offline). This paper draws on MD's experience of conducting these interviews--both online and face-to-face. Synchronous online interviews have the advantage of being cheap, convenient and attractive to people who do not like face-to-face interviews. However, some of the social conventions and technical limitations of computer-mediated-communication can introduce ambiguity into the online dialogue. To minimize this ambiguity, both interviewer and interviewee have to edit their online interaction. One of the distinctive features of the online interview is that it emerges as a form of textual performance. This raises fundamental questions about the suitability of the synchronous online interview for exploring sensitive topics such as risky sexual behaviour.