Network Analysis and Financial Diaries (NetFi)

The Network Analysis and Financial Diaries (NetFi) team researches complementary and community currencies that use an Unconditional Basic Income as a distribution mechanism. As a methodological team, NetFi develops, among other things, programs and procedures that can be used to research these currencies. It is currently developing three different software solutions for this purpose – including a program that can be used to analyze graph-based network data.

In this context, both the macro-stabilizing effect (Stodder/Lietaer 2016) and the local multiplier effect are being studied, using flow motif detection (Iosifidis et al. 2018). In addition, the financial diaries method is further developed and extended with categorization techniques. Both methods allow for a closer examination of how complementary and community currencies can be used and the usage behavior of currency participants.

With its heterodox research methods, the NetFi team provides a methodological toolbox that all researchers may use free of charge, and in the use of which the FRIBIS team is happy to provide support and advice upon request. By not only developing research methods and programs, but also providing comprehensive and free advice to users of the corresponding programs, NetFi aims to act as an interface between science and activism.

Publications

Cabaña, G., Linares, J. Decolonising money: learning from collective struggles for self-determination. Sustain Sci 17, 1159–1170 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-022-01104-3 

Crocker, G., Lansley, S., Linares, J., Torry, M., Wadsworth, M. (2023). Alternative Funding Methods. In: Torry, M. (eds) The Palgrave International Handbook of Basic Income. Exploring the Basic Income Guarantee. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41001-7_12

Sowelu Avanzo, Teodoro Criscione, Julio Linares, and Claudio Schifanella. 2023. Universal Basic Income in a Blockchain-Based Community Currency. In Proceedings of the 2023 ACM Conference on Information Technology for Social Good (GoodIT ’23). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 223–232. https://doi.org/10.1145/3582515.3609538

C. E. S. Mattsson, T. Criscione, and W.O. Ruddick, Sarafu Community Inclusion Currency, 2020-2021. Scientific Data 9:426, Nature Publishing Group, 2022. Link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-022-01539-4

Teodoro Criscione, Eve Guterman, Sowuelu Avanzo, Julio Linares. Community Currency Systems: basic income, credit clearing, and reserve backed. Models and Design Principles Working paper. FRIBIS Discussion Paper Series, FRIBIS Paper No. 04-2022, 2022. doi:10.6094/FRIBIS/DiscussionPaper/8/04-2022

Mattsson, C.E.S., Criscione, T. & Takes, F.W. Circulation of a digital community currency. Sci Rep 13, 5864 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-33184-1

Sowelu Avanzo, Teodoro Criscione, Julio Linares, and Claudio Schifanella. 2023. Universal Basic Income in a Blockchain-Based Community Currency. In GoodIT 2023: ACM International Conference on Information Technology for Social Good, September 6-8, 2023, Lisbon, Portugal. Link Conference: http://goodit.campusfc.unibo.it/calls/

A. Gama, G. Hoon, J. Linares, T. Criscione, Towards a Municipalist Basic Income System, BIRAL Working paper, 2023. In 22nd BIEN Congress 2023, August 23-26, Seoul, Korea. Link Conference: https://biencongress2023.org/

Research Projects

Circles UBI Pilot Project. Link: https://joincircles.net/ 

Grassroots Economics – Sarafu Network. Link: https://www.grassrootseconomics.org/pages/sarafu-network 

Research Team

Prof. Dr. Janos Kertész
Full Professor and Head of the Department of Network and Data Science, Central European University, Vienna, Austria;
Ph.D. in Physics at the Eötvös University, Budapest, Hungary
Publications
Lives in Vienna, Austria

Sowelu Avanzo
Ph.D. student in Computer Science, University of Turin, Turin, Italy. Member of the research groups Digital Territories and Communities (Department of Computer Science, University of Turin) and CETR (ESOMAS, University of Turin).
Research Fellow of the Computer Science Department for the CO3 Project.
MSc in Finance, University of Turin, Turin, Italy. Master thesis on research fieldwork about the Sarafu currency network (Grassroots Economics) in Kenya.
Lives in Turin, Italy.

FRIBIS Team Coordinator

Teodoro Criscione
Ph.D. Student in Network Science at the Department of Network and Data Science at Central European University, Vienna, Austria.
BA in Development Economics and International Cooperation, University of Florence, Italy;
MSc in Economics, University of Siena, Italy; external research collaborator for community-led credit and monetary innovations at Italian National Research Council.
Lives in Vienna, Austria

Contact: teo.cri.1990@gmail.com

Transfer Team

Julio Linares
Co-President of Circles Coop eG.  in Berlin, and Social Outreach officer for the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN). Originally from Guatemala, Julio is a founding member of the Basic Income Network in Taiwan. MSc. Anthropology and Development from the London School of Economics, London, UK. MA Applied Economics and Social Development, National Cheng Chi Univerisity, Taipei, Taiwan. Co-founder of the Community Currency Alliance.
Lives in Berlin, Germany

Giulio Quarta
Co-founder and director of Crypto Commons Association, promoting the general development of Commons-centric decentralized infrastructures through contents, research, courses and events.
Post-capitalist activist and co-founder of the Commons Hub in Austria, where he lives. Master degree in Sociology, especially focused on sociology of economics, STS and post-colonial studies, marxist approach.
He lives in Hirschwang an der Rax, Austria.