Publications

@article{Offshore2017,

title = {Uncovering Offshore Financial Centers: Conduits and Sinks in the Global Corporate Ownership Network},

author = {J Garcia-Bernardo and J Fichtner and F W Takes and E M Heemskerk},

url = {https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-06322-9},

doi = {10.1038/s41598-017-06322-9},

year  = {2017},

date = {2017-07-24},

journal = {Scientific Reports},

volume = {7},

number = {Article 6246},

abstract = {Multinational corporations use highly complex structures of parents and subsidiaries to organize

their operations and ownership. O shore Financial Centers (OFCs) facilitate these structures through low taxation and lenient regulation, but are increasingly under scrutiny, for instance for enabling tax avoidance. Therefore, the identi cation of OFC jurisdictions has become a politicized and contested issue. We introduce a novel data-driven approach for identifying OFCs based on the global corporate ownership network, in which over 98 million  rms (nodes) are connected through 71 million ownership relations. This granular  rm-level network data uniquely allows identifying both sink-OFCs and conduit- OFCs. Sink-OFCs attract and retain foreign capital while conduit-OFCs are attractive intermediate destinations in the routing of international investments and enable the transfer of capital without taxation. We identify 24 sink-OFCs. In addition, a small set of  ve countries – the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Singapore and Switzerland – canalize the majority of corporate o shore investment as conduit-OFCs. Each conduit jurisdiction is specialized in a geographical area and there

is signi cant specialization based on industrial sectors. Against the idea of OFCs as exotic small islands that cannot be regulated, we show that many sink and conduit-OFCs are highly developed countries.},

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}

@article{ESB,

title = {Langetermijnoriëntatie en de opkomst van passieve investeerders},

author = {E M Heemskerk},

url = {https://esb.nu/esb/20029499/langetermijnorientatie-en-de-opkomst-van-passieve-investeerders},

year  = {2017},

date = {2017-07-13},

journal = {Economisch Statistische Berichten (ESB)},

volume = {102},

number = {4751},

pages = {320-321},

abstract = {Passieve investeerders zijn de afgelopen jaren flinke gegroeid. BlackRock, Vanguard en State Street hebben nu belangen in de meeste beursgenoteerde bedrijven. Welke rol vervullen deze aandeel­houders en wat betekent dit voor het management?},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Rijnland,

title = {Ligt het Rijnland nu in de VS? Lange termijn oriëntatie en passieve investeringsfondsen},

author = {E M Heemskerk},

url = {http://heemskerk.socsci.uva.nl/pdfs/Ligt%20het%20Rijnland%20nu%20in%20de%20VS.pdf},

year  = {2017},

date = {2017-06-16},

journal = {Goed Bestuur & Toezicht},

volume = {13},

number = {2},

pages = {14-16},

abstract = {Bedreigd door vijandige overnamepogingen roepen bestuurders van Nederlandse bedrijven en politici om beschermingsconstructies. Hun pleidooi voor de lange termijn lijkt wat hypocriet. De ongekende opkomst van Amerikaanse indexbeleggers verklaart wellicht meer. Enorme fondsen als Blackrock zijn op de lange termijn gericht en onderhouden veel contact met ‘hun’ ondernemingen.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

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}

@article{AntitrustChronicle,

title = {The New Mandate Owners: Passive Asset Managers and the Decoupling of Corporate Ownership},

author = {C Shenkar and E M Heemskerk and J Fichtner},

url = {https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2988937},

year  = {2017},

date = {2017-06-14},

journal = {Competition Policy International Antitrust Chronicle},

volume = {Spring 2017 Volume 1},

number = {3},

pages = {51-57},

abstract = {A major shift toward passively managed index funds in recent years has led to the re-concentration of corporate ownership in the hands of just three large asset management firms, the Big Three: BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street. We propose that this trend has re-structured ownership in capital markets. Adopting a contractual view to the corporate share, we re-define share holding and suggest that the New Mandate Owners in fact hold the essence of corporate power, as their aggregated positions capture the core element of the franchise of corporate voting.},

keywords = {corporate ownership, passive asset management},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{BigThree,

title = {Hidden Power of the Big Three? Passive Index Funds, Re-Concentration of Corporate Ownership, and New Financial Risk},

author = {J Fichtner and E M Heemskerk and J Garcia-Bernardo},

url = {https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/business-and-politics/article/hidden-power-of-the-big-three-passive-index-funds-reconcentration-of-corporate-ownership-and-new-financial-risk/30AD689509AAD62F5B677E916C28C4B6},

doi = {10.1017/bap.2017.6},

year  = {2017},

date = {2017-04-25},

journal = {Business and Politics},

volume = {19},

number = {2},

pages = {298-326},

abstract = {Since 2008, a massive shift has occurred from active toward passive investment strategies. The passive index fund industry is dominated by BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street, which we call the “Big Three.” We compre- hensively map the ownership of the Big Three in the United States and find that together they constitute the largest shareholder in 88 percent of the S&P 500 firms. In contrast to active funds, the Big Three hold relatively illiquid and perma- nent ownership positions. This has led to opposing views on incentives and pos- sibilities to actively exert shareholder power. Some argue passive investors have little shareholder power because they cannot “exit,” while others point out this gives them stronger incentives to actively influence corporations. Through an anal- ysis of proxy vote records we find that the Big Three do utilize coordinated voting strategies and hence follow a centralized corporate governance strategy. However, they generally vote with management, except at director (re-)elections. Moreover, the Big Three may exert “hidden power” through two channels: First, via private engagements with management of invested companies; and second, because company executives could be prone to internalizing the objectives of the Big Three. We discuss how this development entails new forms of financial risk.},

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pubstate = {published},

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}

@article{Veen,

title = {Interlocking Directorate Networks},

author = {K van Veen and E M Heemskerk},

url = {https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-1-4614-7163-9_274-1},

doi = {10.1007/978-1-4614-7163-9_274-1},

isbn = {978-1-4614-7163-9},

year  = {2017},

date = {2017-03-17},

journal = {Encyclopedia of Social Network Analysis and Mining},

pages = {1-6},

abstract = {Since the emergence of the modern corporation in the nineteenth century, managerial power has been in the hands of a relatively small group of people, often referred to as the business elite. Within this group, a substantial number of in- dividuals sit on the board of directors of mul- tiple companies. By combining multiple board positions, these individuals create “interlocking directorates” between companies. As a result, they can – potentially – coordinate management decisions, share information and practices, and enforce norms in different company contexts. This concentration of economic power in the hands of a few and its manifestation in extensive networks of interlocking directorates led to a sig- nificant set of studies on business elites beginning in the early twentieth century. Questions include the nature and delineation of the business elite and the causes and consequences of this phe- nomenon for the company and its stakeholders (e.g., Mizruchi 1996).

The set of companies, directors, and their link- ages form an “affiliation” or “two-mode” network from which a “one-mode” company-by-company network and a director-by-director network can be induced. These networks can be seen as a reflection of economic power structures and raise a variety of different questions which have been approached with different perspectives and by applying different network analyses.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{GPU,

title = {Exploiting GPUs for Fast Force-Directed Visualization of Large-Scale Networks},

author = {G G Brinkmann and K F D Rietveld and F W Takes},

url = {http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8025312/},

doi = {10.1109/ICPP.2017.47},

year  = {2017},

date = {2017-00-00},

journal = {Proceedings of the 46th International Conference on Parallel Processing (ICPP)},

pages = {382-391},

abstract = {Network analysis software relies on graph layout algorithms to enable users to visually explore network data. Nowadays, networks easily consist of millions of nodes and edges, resulting in hours of computation time to obtain a readable graph layout on a typical workstation. Although these machines usually do not have a very large number of CPU cores, they can easily be equipped with Graphics Processing Units (GPUs), opening up the possibility of exploiting hundreds or even thousands of cores to counter the aforementioned computational challenges. In this paper we introduce a novel GPU framework for visualizing large real-world network data. The main focus is on a GPU implementation of force-directed graph layout algorithms, which are known to create high quality network visualizations. The proposed framework is used to parallelize the well-known ForceAtlas2 algorithm, which is widely used in many popular network analysis packages and toolkits. The different procedures and data structures of the algorithm are adjusted to the CUDA GPU architecture's specifics in terms of memory coalescing, shared memory usage and thread workload balance. To evaluate its performance, the GPU implementation is tested using a diverse set of 38 different large-scale real-world networks. This allows for a thorough characterization of the parallelizable components of both force-directed layout algorithms in general as well as the proposed GPU framework as a whole. Experiments demonstrate how the approach can efficiently process very large real-world networks, showing overall speedup factors between 40x and 123x compared to existing CPU implementations. In practice, this means that a network with 4 million nodes and 120 million edges can be visualized in 14 minutes rather than 9 hours.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Anglo-America,

title = {Perpetual decline or persistent dominance? Uncovering Anglo-America’s true structural power in global finance},

author = {J Fichtner},

url = {https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/review-of-international-studies/article/perpetual-decline-or-persistent-dominance-uncovering-angloamericas-true-structural-power-in-global-finance/75536FC7435F72FC9AB4968D0509F019},

doi = {10.1017/S0260210516000206},

year  = {2016},

date = {2016-06-29},

journal = {Review of International Studies},

volume = {43},

number = {1},

pages = {3-28},

abstract = {The prediction of America’s decline is a regularly recurring phenomenon; this also pertains to the pivotal field of global finance. This article argues that, first we have to consider the United States together with the other Anglophone countries. The English-speaking countries and territories – Anglo-America – have deep common political and socioeconomic roots, of which the unique global Five Eyes intelligence cooperation is merely one manifestation. In finance, New York and London (NY-LON) constitute the decision-making core of this transnational formation. Second, to analyse the highly complex phenomenon of structural power in the globalised international political economy we have to dig deeper to uncover truly meaningful data. Thus, this article evaluates data for nine central segments of global finance from around the year 2000 to 2014. Contrary to the assertions of many declinists, these data show that Anglo-America’s dominant structural power has been persistent during this period. Moreover, four novel visualisations show that the US-UK axis is the fulcrum of the international financial system. However, contemporary global finance is characterised by a high degree of latent fragility; significant imbalances, inequalities and contradictions persist and are even likely to grow, potentially undermining the legitimacy and the stability of the whole system.},

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pubstate = {published},

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@article{Europe2010,

title = {Close communication and 2-clubs in corporate networks: Europe 2010},

author = {R J Mokken and E M Heemskerk and S Laan},

url = {https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13278-016-0345-x},

doi = {10.1007/s13278-016-0345-x},

year  = {2016},

date = {2016-06-22},

journal = {Social Network Analysis and Mining},

volume = {6},

number = {1: Article 40},

abstract = {Corporate networks, as induced by interlocking directorates between corporations, provide structures of personal communication between their boards. This paper studies such networks using the framework of a previous paper by Laan et al. (Soc Netw Anal Min, 2016. doi:10.1007/s13278-016-0326-0) where close communication is defined by sub-networks, so that each pair of nodes (boards of a corporation) are either neighbours or have at least one common neighbour. These correspond to sub-graphs of diameter at most 2, designated by us earlier as 2-clubs of three types (coteries, social circles and hamlets), and conform three levels of close communication in social networks. They are all contained within the disjoint boroughs of a network, supercommunities which envelope all close communication between nodes of a network. This framework is applied here to an analysis of corporate board interlocks between the top 300 European corporations 2010, using the data from an earlier study by one of us (Heemskerk in Econ Soc 42:74–101, 2013). While the results corroborate the main findings of the earlier studies, our approach also uncovers additional, thus far unrevealed patterns. A single dominant European borough with the Francophone network as its centre and that of Germany only regionally and internally connected. The UK business elite on the other hand is very present and prominent in this European structure of corporate close communication.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Centrality,

title = {Centrality in the Global Network of Corporate Control},

author = {F W Takes and E M Heemskerk},

url = {http://arxiv.org/abs/1605.08197},

doi = {10.1007/s13278-016-0402-5},

year  = {2016},

date = {2016-05-22},

journal = {Social Network Analysis and Mining},

volume = {6},

number = {1: Article 97},

abstract = {Corporations across the world are highly interconnected in a large global network of corporate control. This paper investigates the global board interlock network, covering 400,000 firms linked through 1,700,000 edges representing shared directors between these firms. The main focus is on the concept of centrality, which is used to investigate the embeddedness of firms from a particular country within the global network. The study results in three contributions. First, to the best of our knowledge for the first time we can investigate the topology as well as the concept of centrality in corporate networks at a global scale, allowing for the largest cross-country comparison ever done in interlocking directorates literature. We demonstrate, amongst other things, extremely similar network topologies, yet large differences between countries when it comes to the relation between economic prominence indicators and firm centrality. Second, we introduce two new metrics that are specifically suitable for comparing the centrality ranking of a partition to that of the full network. Using the notion of centrality persistence we propose to measure the persistence of a partition's centrality ranking in the full network. In the board interlock network, it allows us to assess the extent to which the footprint of a national network is still present within the global network. Next, the measure of centrality ranking dominance tells us whether a partition (country) is more dominant at the top or the bottom of the centrality ranking of the full (global) network. Finally, comparing these two new measures of persistence and dominance between different countries allows us to classify these countries based the their embeddedness, measured using the relation between the centrality of a country's firms on the national and the global scale of the board interlock network.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

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@article{Carroll,

title = {The global corporate elite after the financial crisis: evidence from the transnational network of interlocking directorates},

author = {E M Heemskerk and M Fennema and W K Carroll},

url = {http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/glob.12098/abstract},

doi = {10.1111/glob.12098},

year  = {2016},

date = {2016-01-00},

journal = {Global Networks},

volume = {16},

number = {1},

pages = {68-88},

abstract = {What impact did the recent financial crisis have on the corporate elite's international network? Has corporate governance taken on an essentially national structure or have transnational networks remained robust? We investigate this issue by comparing the networks of interlocking directorates among the 176 largest corporations in the world economy in 1976, 1996, 2006 and 2013. We find that corporate elites have not retrenched into their national business communities: the transnational network increased in relative importance and remained largely intact during the crisis lasting from 2006 to 2013. However, this network does not depend – as it used to do – on a small number of big linkers but on a growing number of single linkers. The network has become less hierarchical. As a group, the corporate elite has become more transnational in character. We see this as indicative of a recomposition of the corporate elite from a national to a transnational orientation.},

note = {Featured in Harvard Business Review: https://hbr.org/2016/04/how-corporate-boards-connect-in-charts},

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pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{LargeScale,

title = {Where is the global corporate elite? A large-scale network study of local and nonlocal interlocking directorates},

author = {E M Heemskerk and F W Takes and J Garcia-Bernardo and M J Huijzer},

url = {http://hdl.handle.net/11245.1/7c2efec1-5024-4bf9-9ec2-cc0c4664397e},

doi = {10.2383/85292},

year  = {2016},

date = {2016-00-00},

journal = {Sociologica},

volume = {2016},

number = {2},

pages = {1-31},

abstract = {Abstract: Business élites reconfigure their locus of organization over time, from the city level, to the national level, and beyond. We ask what the current level of élite organization is and propose a novel theoretical and empirical approach to answer this question. Building on the universal distinction between local and nonlocal ties we use network analysis and community detection to dissect the global network of interlocking directorates among over five million firms. We find that élite orientation is indeed changing from the national to the transnational plane, but we register a considerable heterogeneity across different regions in the world. In some regions the business communities are organized along national borders, whereas in other areas the locus of organization is at the city level or international level. London dominates the global corporate élite network. Our findings underscore that the study of corporate élites requires an approach that is sensitive to levels of organization that go beyond the confines of nation states.},

note = {Part of Symposium: Why Élites Matter? A Sociological Assessment.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{GlobalCapitalism,

title = {The Corporate Elite Community Structure of Global Capitalism},

author = {E M Heemskerk and F W Takes},

url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13563467.2015.1041483},

doi = {10.1080/13563467.2015.1041483},

year  = {2016},

date = {2016-00-00},

journal = {New Political Economy},

volume = {21},

number = {1},

pages = {90-118},

abstract = {A key debate on the merits and consequences of globalisation asks to what extent we have moved to a multipolar global political economy. Here we investigate this issue through the properties and topologies of corporate elite networks and ask: what is the community structure of the global corporate elite? In order to answer this question, we analyse how the largest one million firms in the world are interconnected at the level of corporate governance through interlocking directorates. Community detection through modularity maximisation reveals that regional clusters play a fundamental role in the network architecture of the global political economy. Transatlantic connections remain particularly strong: Europe and North America remain interconnected in a dense network of shared directors. A distinct Asian cluster stands apart as separate and oriented more towards itself. While it develops and gains economic and political power, Asia remains by and large outside the scope of the networks of the incumbent global (that is, North Atlantic) corporate elite. We see this as a sign of the rise of competing corporate elites. But the corporate elites from the traditional core countries still form a powerful opponent for any competing faction in the global corporate elite.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{2005-2010,

title = {The Community Structure of the European Network of Interlocking Directorates 2005–2010},

author = {E M Heemskerk and F Daolio and M Tomassini},

url = {http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0068581},

doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0068581},

year  = {2013},

date = {2013-07-19},

journal = {PLoS ONE},

volume = {8},

number = {7: e68581},

abstract = {The boards of directors at large European companies overlap with each other to a sizable extent both within and across national borders. This could have important economic, political and management consequences. In this work we study in detail the topological structure of the networks that arise from this phenomenon. Using a comprehensive information database, we reconstruct the implicit networks of shared directorates among the top 300 European firms in 2005 and 2010, and suggest a number of novel ways to explore the trans-nationality of such business elite networks. Powerful community detection heuristics indicate that geography still plays an important role: there exist clear communities and they have a distinct national character. Nonetheless, from 2005 to 2010 we observe a densification of the boards interlocks network and a larger transnational orientation in its communities. Together with central actors and assortativity analyses, we provide statistical evidence that, at the level of corporate governance, Europe is getting closer.},

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pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{comconsist,

title = {Community membership consistency in corporate board interlock networks},

author = {D.E. van Kuppevelt, R. Bakshi, E.M. Heemskerk, F.W. Takes},

url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2008.00745},

journal = {arxiv},

volume = {1807.05715},

keywords = {transnational board interlocks},

pubstate = {forthcoming},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{nokey,

title = {Proximity at a distance: The relationship between foreign subsidiary co-location and MNC headquarters board interlock formation},

author = {Frank de Beule and Stefano Elia and Javier Garcia-Bernardo and Eelke M Heemskerk and Andreja Jaklič and Frank W Takes and Michal Zdziarski},

url = {DOI: 10.1016/j.ibusrev.2021.101971

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S096959312100189X},

doi = {10.1016/j.ibusrev.2021.101971},

journal = {International Business Review},

abstract = {Corporations seek various relationships, such as board interlocks, with other firms to reduce resource dependencies. The consistent theoretical expectation and empirical finding that physical proximity is an important driver for board interlock formation is seemingly at odds with the emerging and growing literature on transnational board interlock ties. We argue that the effect of proximity on multinational corporation (MNC) board interlock formation can also be attributed to the firms’ internationalization strategy, namely, when they have co-located subsidiaries in foreign markets. We call this “proximity at a distance”. We test our assumptions on a dataset covering almost 43,000 board interlocks among MNC headquarters and their 12 million subsidiary co-location pairs. We confirm that proximity among headquarters increases the odds of interlocking but also find robust evidence that co-located subsidiaries also increase firms’ propensity to interlock, particularly for transnational board interlocks. Our results help provide an explanation for the “paradox of distance” by showing that the interlock between two distant MNCs may be driven by proximity to their foreign subsidiaries. As such, we illustrate how MNCs’ resource-dependent strategic responses can occur at the headquarters level to address uncertainties experienced at the subsidiary level.},

keywords = {board interlocks, HQ-subsidiary relations, internationalization, proximity, resource dependence, subsidiary co-location, transnational board interlocks},

pubstate = {forthcoming},

tppubtype = {article}

}