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Online Social Networks (OSNs) have become an integral part of today's Web. Politicians, celebrities, revolutionists, and others use OSNs as a podium to deliver their message to millions of active web users. Unfortunately, in the wrong hands, OSNs can be used to run astroturf campaigns to spread misinformation and propaganda. Such campaigns usually start off by infiltrating a targeted OSN on a large scale. In this paper, we evaluate how vulnerable OSNs are to a large-scale infiltration by socialbots: computer programs that control OSN accounts and mimic real users. We adopt a traditional web-based botnet design and built a Socialbot Network (SbN): a group of adaptive socialbots that are orchestrated in a command-and-control fashion. We operated such an SbN on Facebook—a 750 million user OSN—for about 8 weeks. We collected data related to users' behavior in response to a large-scale infiltration where socialbots were used to connect to a large number of Facebook users. Our results show that (1) OSNs, such as Facebook, can be infiltrated with a success rate of up to 80%, (2) depending on users' privacy settings, a successful infiltration can result in privacy breaches where even more users' data are exposed when compared to a purely public access, and (3) in practice, OSN security defenses, such as the Facebook Immune System, are not effective enough in detecting or stopping a large-scale infiltration as it occurs.

Online Social Networks (OSNs) have become an integral part of today's Web. Politicians, celebrities, revolutionists, and others use OSNs as a podium to deliver their message to millions of active web users. Unfortunately, in the wrong hands, OSNs can be used to run astroturf campaigns to spread misinformation and propaganda. Such campaigns usually start off by infiltrating a targeted OSN on a large scale. In this paper, we evaluate how vulnerable OSNs are to a large-scale infiltration by socialbots: computer programs that control OSN accounts and mimic real users. We adopt a traditional web-based botnet design and built a Socialbot Network (SbN): a group of adaptive socialbots that are orchestrated in a command-and-control fashion. We operated such an SbN on Facebook—a 750 million user OSN—for about 8 weeks. We collected data related to users' behavior in response to a large-scale infiltration where socialbots were used to connect to a large number of Facebook users. Our results show that (1) OSNs, such as Facebook, can be infiltrated with a success rate of up to 80%, (2) depending on users' privacy settings, a successful infiltration can result in privacy breaches where even more users' data are exposed when compared to a purely public access, and (3) in practice, OSN security defenses, such as the Facebook Immune System, are not effective enough in detecting or stopping a large-scale infiltration as it occurs.

In the aftermath of the so-called Marginal Revolution of the last end of the nineteenth century, economic analysis split into two branches. The first one was made up of economists who took as the methodological starting-point of their analyses the static or stationary state of a barter economy and considered that this basic framework was likely to be extended in order to account for monetary and financial considerations, as well as dynamics. However, in such a setting, the introduction of money, bank-credit, or any factor of growth did not substantially alter the features that are associated with the rudimentary economy of static real exchange.

The role of money in influencing real economic activities has been a long-standing debate in macroeconomics. As per the Keynesian theory, household consumption expenditure plays a significant role in promoting economic growth. Given the rapid consumption-led growth pattern in the emerging Asia Pacific region, in this article, we attempt to assess the role of money in influencing household consumption expenditure, which propels economic growth. We employ a panel data set from 2005–2018 for 10 emerging Asian economies, covering Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam. Given the region's heterogeneous nature, we employ a variant of the popular St Louise equation model with autoregressive distributed lag model (ARDL) panel framework based on pooled mean group (PMG) and dynamic fixed effect (DFE) models developed by Pesaran and Shin to study the underlying relationships. Both PMG and DFE models suggest a strong positive relationship between money and household consumption expenditure both in the long run and short run. After allowing for control variables such as government final consumption expenditure and interest rate, the relationships continue to hold steady. Further, the relationship holds true across both narrow (M1) and broad money (M3) measures. The government final consumption expenditure and interest rates do not have influence on household consumption expenditure in the long run, but they have an influence in the short run. JEL Codes: C23, O16, O47, E51, E31, E21

Intro -- ‎Contents -- ‎Acknowledgements -- ‎List of Illustrations -- ‎Figures -- ‎Tables -- ‎Maps -- ‎List of Roman Emperors -- ‎Central Roman Emperors -- ‎Gallic Emperors -- ‎Chapter 1. Introduction: Approaching the Imperial Roman Economy -- ‎1. Central Aims of the Book -- ‎2. Who Will Read This? Target Audiences -- ‎3. Lingering Questions about Imperial Rome -- ‎4. The Many Faces of Roman Economic History -- ‎5. From Fine-Grained to 'Big Picture': Methods and Treatment of the Evidence -- ‎6. The Contribution of Modern Thinking to Ancient Problems -- ‎7. Book Organization -- ‎8. Terms and Definitions -- ‎Chapter 2. The Gift That Kept On Giving: Perpetual Endowments and the Role of Prosociality in Rome's Economic Development -- ‎1. The Evolution of Prosocial Traits from the Early Days of Rome -- ‎2. Prosociality, Charity, and Social Capital: How Elite Benefaction Came to Be -- ‎3. Perpetual Foundations: The Gift That Kept On Giving -- ‎4. What Lies under the Epiphenomena? -- ‎Chapter 3. Investing in the Roman Economy: Material Evidence for Economic Development -- ‎1. Benefactions as Wealth Generators -- ‎2. Investment Opportunities in the Roman Economy -- ‎3. Money in the Roman Economy: The Numismatic Evidence -- ‎4. Supplying the Demand: Coinage, Monetization, and Market Development -- ‎Chapter 4. Aligning Public and Private Interests: Public Building, Private Money, and Urban Development -- ‎1. Public Needs and Private Incentives -- ‎2. Rome: A World of Cities -- ‎3. Public Building in the Cities of Roman Africa: A Case Study -- ‎4. Urbanization and the Development of the Non-agrarian Sectors -- ‎5. The Surprisingly Short Reach of the Roman State -- ‎6. The Public Deeds of Private Citizens -- ‎7. Aligning Interests -- ‎Chapter 5. Measuring Economic Performance beyond GDP: Economic Growth, Income Inequality, and Roman Living Standards.

In this article, we bring to the foreground an understudied dimension of working children's lives in the Global South: their access to money and the consumption this facilitates. Drawing on life history interviews, we show that among the Gamo weavers of Ethiopia, the modern phenomenon of a monetised childhood is at least six decades old and an element of the informal apprenticeships through which Gamo children learn to weave. Qualitative research with young weavers shows that both girls and boys become involved in weaving. Yet the amount of senbeta misa money they receive differs substantially, fuelling distinctly different consumption practices and reinforcing broader gender relations. Zooming in on boys' monetised leisure activities, we furthermore argue that through consumption belonging to age-based, ethnic peer groups is realised. Moreover, while the monetisation of leisure is shaped by globalisation and market forces, we show that boys and young men themselves also actively contribute to the monetisation of their leisure activities and thereby transform the nature of play.