HNDS-R: Secrecy and Stratification -- A Network Analysis

This project takes a new approach to an old question: how do the rich keep getting richer? Wealth inequality has grown to levels not seen since the Gilded Age of the late 19th Century. For over a century, sociologists have known that elite secrecy supported by clandestine networks of financial and social relationships are major contributors to wealth inequality, but lack of data has limited investigation of the precise relationships. With newly available Big Data resources and advanced network analysis techniques this classic theory has become increasingly relevant and is primed for a data-driven revival. In particular, our project examines empirically at an unprecedented scale the highly confidential offshore financial networks that have built the fortunes of a few thousand high-net-worth individuals around the world to historic levels. By conducting a global network analysis of the phenomenon, informed by recent availability of one of the largest public datasets in the world—the Offshore Leaks database, containing almost 7 terabytes of data, including the Panama, Paradise, and Pandora Papers—this study provides greater clarity than previously has been possible on this topic of timely interest to scholars and decision makers. Guided by questions generated by in-depth ethnographic research on offshore finance, network science and machine learning are used in a large data structuring, analysis, and augmentation effort to: 1) build theory and data infrastructure to advance high-quality research on stratification and secrecy, and 2) address unanswered questions about the growth and network structure of global inequality. Additional contributions to social science include a unique and valuable database resource for other social scientists and a new multi-dimensional model of secrecy. This project is jointly funded by the Sociology Program and by the Human Networks and Data Science - Research (HNDS-R) Program. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.