Information Sciences Institute, University of Southern California, Marina del Rey, CA, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2021 Mar 25;16(3):e0248573. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0248573. eCollection 2021.
The Panama Papers comprise one of the most recent influential leaks containing detailed information on intermediary companies (such as law firms), offshore entities and company officers, and serve as a valuable source of insight into the operations of (approximately) 214,000 shell companies incorporated in tax havens around the globe over the past half century. Entities and relations in the papers can be used to construct a network that permits, in principle, a systematic and scientific study at scale using techniques developed in the computational social science and network science communities. In this paper, we propose such a study by attempting to quantify and profile the importance of entities. In particular, our research explores whether intermediaries are significantly more influential than offshore entities, and whether different centrality measures lead to varying, or even incompatible, conclusions. Some findings yield conclusions that resemble Simpson's paradox. We also explore the role that jurisdictions play in determining entity importance.
巴拿马文件是最近最有影响力的泄密事件之一，其中包含有关中介公司（如律师事务所）、离岸实体和公司管理人员的详细信息，是了解（大约）过去半个世纪在全球避税地成立的 214,000 家壳公司运作情况的宝贵资源。文件中的实体和关系可用于构建一个网络，原则上可以使用计算社会科学和网络科学领域开发的技术进行系统和科学的大规模研究。在本文中，我们通过尝试量化和分析实体的重要性来进行这样的研究。特别是，我们的研究探讨了中介机构是否比离岸实体更具影响力，以及不同的中心性度量是否会导致不同的，甚至不兼容的结论。一些发现得出了类似于辛普森悖论的结论。我们还探讨了司法管辖区在确定实体重要性方面所扮演的角色。
