Uncovering Networks of Corporate Control

Frank Takes from the University of Amsterdam has won the Young eScientist Award 2017. The prize aims to stimulate a young scientist demonstrating excellence in eScience: the development or application of digital technology to address scientific challenges. The prize will be used to undertake a joint research project, in which Takes will receive support by eScience Research Engineers (experts in the development and application of research software).

Takes and his fellow researchers at the University of Amsterdam’s CORPNET group focus on understanding corporate networks, structures that provide insights in topics such as business elites and tax avoidance via offshore finance. The latter has been a hot topic in recent years, especially with large companies moving offshore from their ‘home’ nation for the purpose of tax avoidance. Together with the eScience Center, Takes wants to develop an interactive web-based platform to investigate the dynamics of these global corporate networks.

The platform, aimed at a non-technical audience, should serve both as a data hub and a yearly updated index of tax havens, and visualize value flows between countries across the world. This will enable researchers, journalists and policy makers to directly gain insight in the evolution of corporate tax avoidance across the globe – a topic with great relevance to society.