A single social phenomenon (such as crime, unemployment or birth rate) can be observed through temporal series corresponding to units at different levels (cities, regions, countries...). Units at a given local level may follow a collective trend imposed by external conditions, but also may display fluctuations of purely local origin. The local behavior is usually computed as the difference between the local data and a global average (e.g. a national average), a view point which can be very misleading. In this article, we propose a method for separating the local dynamics from the global trend in a collection of correlated time series. We take an independent component analysis approach in which we do not assume a small average local contribution in contrast with previously proposed methods. We first test our method on financial time series for which various data analysis tools have already been used. For the S&P500 stocks, our method is able to identify two classes of stocks with marked different behaviors: the `followers' (stocks driven by the collective trend), and the `leaders' (stocks for which local fluctuations dominate). Furthermore, as a byproduct contributing to its validation, the method also allows to classify stocks in several groups consistent with industrials sectors. We then consider crime rate series, a domain where the separation between global and local policies is still a major subject of debate. We apply our method to the states in the US and the regions in France. In the case of the US data, we observe large fluctuations in the transition period of mid-70's during which crime rates increased significantly, whereas since the 80's, the state crime rates are governed by external factors, and the importance of local specificities being decreasing.
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