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An individual’s identity in a human society is specified by his or her name. Differently from family names, usually inherited from fathers, a given name for a child is often chosen at the parents’ disposal. However, their decision cannot be made in a vacuum but affected by social conventions and trends. Furthermore, such social pressure changes in time, as new names gain popularity while some other names are gradually forgotten. In this paper, we investigate how popularity of given names has evolved over the last century by using datasets collected in Korea, the province of Quebec in Canada, and the United States. In each of these countries, the average popularity of given names exhibits typical patterns of rise and fall with a time scale of about one generation. We also observe that notable changes of diversity in given names signal major social changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The weighted and directed network of countries based on the number of overseas banks is analyzed in terms of its fragility to the banking crisis of one country. We use two different models to describe transmission of shocks, one local and the other global. Depending on the original source of the crisis, the overall size of crisis impacts is found to differ country by country. For the two-step local spreading model, it is revealed that the scale of the first impact is determined by the out-strength, the total number of overseas branches of the country at the origin of the crisis, while the second impact becomes more serious if the in-strength at the origin is increased. For the global spreading model, some countries named “triggers” are found to play important roles in shock transmission, and the importance of the feed-forward-loop mechanism is pointed out. We also discuss practical policy implications of the present work. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

We investigate co-sponsorship among lawmakers by applying the principal-component analysis to the bills introduced in the 20th National Assembly of Korea. The most relevant factor for co-sponsorship is their party membership, and we clearly observe a signal of a third-party system in action. To identify other factors than the party influence, we analyze how lawmakers are clustered inside each party, and the result shows significant similarity between their committee membership and co-sponsorship in case of the ruling party. In addition, by monitoring each lawmaker's similarity to the average behavior of his or her party, we have found that it begins to decrease approximately one month before the lawmaker actually changes the party membership. • Party membership largely determined cosponsorship in the 20th Assembly of Korea. • Principal-component analysis clearly shows a third-party system in action. • Committee membership was a relevant factor in cosponsorship of the ruling party. • Deviation from the party's average behavior was precursory of membership change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]