Interlocking directorates in Irish companies using bipartite networks: a latent space approach

We analyze the temporal bipartite network of the leading Irish companies and their directors from 2003 to 2013, encompassing the end of the Celtic Tiger boom and the ensuing financial crisis in 2008. We focus on the evolution of company interlocks, whereby a company director simultaneously sits on two or more boards. We develop a new statistical model for this dataset by embedding the positions of companies and directors in a latent space. A useful aspect of our modelling approach is that it accommodates the development of metrics which can be used to assess the evolution of interlockingness over time.