EPJ Data Science Special Issue on Data Science Perspectives on Economic Crime
- Details
- Published on 04 March 2021

Economic crimes including corruption, fraud, collusion, and tax evasion impose significant costs to societies all around the world. Beyond their direct economic costs, these behaviors reduce mutual trust and cohesion in society. The erosion of these fundamental elements of a healthy society is hypothesized to contribute to growing inequality and the strengthening of political populism. Altogether there are significant incentives to study economic crimes. However, until recently, its investigation remained largely the preserve of law enforcement, which has resources to investigate only a tiny minority of cases.
Researchers now have more data than ever to investigate these phenomena, but face several unique challenges. The lack of unbiased ground-truth data hinders the straightforward application of machine learning. Publicly available data often contains only suggestive traces of illegal activity. Though economic crimes are increasingly international, data availability and quality varies highly across borders. Despite these difficulties, recent years have witnessed a remarkable increase in scientific activity in this area. Studying economic crime from a data science perspective offers unique insights and can inform the design of novel solutions. The results of such research are of eminent interest to governments, law enforcement, organizations, companies and civil society watchdogs. In light of this recent activity, there is a need to survey the field, to reflect on progress, shortcomings, and open problems, and to highlight promising new methods.
In this special issue, we gather research that highlights novel applications of data science to the problems and challenges of economic crime. We also welcome data-critical studies and mixed-methods papers, recognizing that data-driven methods complement rather than substitute for other approaches.
Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
- Estimating levels and trends of economic crimes using open source data
- Corruption in public procurement
- Collusion and cartels
- Network science perspectives on economic crime
- Agent-based models of economic crime
- Detecting fraud in transaction data
- Critical perspectives on the application of data science to economic crime (i.e. pitfalls and biases of predictive policing and profiling)
- Data-driven analyses of organized crime and mafia-type groups
- Tax evasion and money laundering
- Terrorist financing
- The political organization of economic crimes
- Lobbying networks and political favoritism
- Social and communication networks of criminal conspiracies
- Transactions on the darknet and the role of crypto-currency in economic crime
- Data-driven journalism and OSINT perspectives on economic crime
- Novel datasets for measuring and tracking economic crime
- Mixed-methods approaches to studying economic crime
Lead Guest Editor
Johannes Wachs, Vienna University of Economics and Business, & Complexity Science Hub Vienna, Austria
Guest Editors
Janos Kertesz, Department of Network and Data Science, Central European University, Vienna, Austria
Mihaly Fazekas, School of Public Policy, Central European University, Vienna, Austria
Elizabeth David-Barrett, Department of Politics/Centre for the Study of Corruption, University of Sussex, UK
Submission deadline: October 1st, 2021
Submission Instructions
The submitted article must be original, unpublished, and not currently under consideration in any other journal. Authors should mention in their cover letters that the manuscript is intended for this special issue as well as the names of the Guest Editors of the special issue so that the Guest Editors can be notified accordingly. Please submit here
When submitting your paper please select the article type "DSEC".
Open calls for papers
-
EPJ A Topical Issue: Heavy and Super-Heavy Nuclei and Elements: Production and Properties
-
EPJ B Topical Issue: Extreme Value Statistics and Search in Biology: Theory and Simulations
-
EPJ B Topical Issue: Recent developments in the functional renormalization group approach to correlated electron systems
-
EPJ D Topical Issue on Electron-Driven Processes from Single Collisions to High-Pressure Plasmas
-
EPJ D Topical Issue: Dynamics and Photodynamics: from isolated molecules to the condensed phase
-
EPJ D Topical Issue: Dynamics of Systems on the Nanoscale (2021)
-
EPJ D Topical Issue: High Field QED Physics
-
EPJ D Topical Issue: Precision Physics of Simple Atomic Systems
-
EPJ D Topical Issue: Quantum Optics of Light and Matter: Honouring Alain Aspect
-
EPJ D Topical Issue: Quantum Walks and applications
-
EPJ Data Science Special Issue on Data Science Perspectives on Economic Crime
-
EPJ E Topical Issue: 50 years of Small Angle Neutron Scattering at the ILL in Grenoble
-
EPJ E Topical Issue: Quantitative AI in Complex Fluids and Complex Flows: Challenges and Benchmarks
-
EPJ H Special Issue: History for Physics: Contextualizing modern developments in the foundations of quantum theory
-
EPJ Plus Focus Point Issue: Advances in cryogenic detectors for dark matter, neutrino physics and astrophysics
-
EPJ Plus Focus Point Issue: Breakthrough optics- and complex systems-based technologies of modulation of drainage and clearing functions of the brain
-
EPJ Plus Focus Point Issue: Citizen science for physics: From Education and Outreach to Crowdsourcing fundamental research
-
EPJ Plus Focus Point Issue: Focus Point on Higher Derivatives in Quantum Gravity: Theory, Tests, Phenomenology
-
EPJ Quantum Technology: Special Issue on Quantum Random Number Generation
-
EPJ Quantum Technology: Special Issue on Quantum Standardization
-
EPJ ST Special Issue: Collective behavior of nonlinear dynamical oscillators
-
EPJ ST Special Issue: Fluid-Fluid and Fluid-Soft Matter Interaction
-
EPJ ST Special Issue: Framework of Fractals in Data Analysis: Theory and Interpretation
-
EPJ ST Special Issue: Noncommutativity and Physics
-
EPJ ST Special Issue: Physics of Animal Navigation
-
EPJ ST Special Issue: Structural Transformations and Non-Equilibrium Phenomena in Multicomponent Disordered Systems
-
EPJ Techniques and Instrumentation: New methodologies and approaches for the control of illicit production, use and trafficking of nuclear material
-
EPJ Techniques and Instrumentation: SI units and experimental techniques