The anatomy of the Cayman Islands offshore financial center: Anglo-America, Japan, and the role of hedge funds

Fichtner, Jan

doi:10.1080/09692290.2016.1243143

Cited by 51 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…Whereas existing research has highlighted the importance of tax legislation and tax advisory firms in attempts to lure investors and companies to tax havens (Fichtner 2016;Hakelberg 2016;Sikka and Hampton 2005;Sikka 2008), the Panama case studies demonstrate that the ways in which trade policies are enforced can also be a major factor. Secrecy jurisdictions have typically been quick to copy new financial 'innovations' from each other, and there is no reason to expect that the aggressive use of trade policies would be an exception.…”

Section: Rethinking the Trade-tax Nexusmentioning

confidence: 99%

Panama and the WTO: new constitutionalism of trade policy and global tax governance

Eskelinen

Ylönen

2017

Review of International Political Economy

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Tax havens and tax flight have lately received increasing attention, while interest toward multilateral trade policies has somewhat diminished. We argue that more attention needs to be paid exactly to the interrelations between trade and tax policies. Drawing from two case studies on Panama's trade disputes, we show how World Trade Organization (WTO) rules can be used both to resist attempts to sanction secrecy structures and to promote measures against tax flight. The theory of new constitutionalism can help to explain how trade treaties can 'lock in' tax policies. However, our case studies show that trade policy not only 'locks in' democratic policy-making, but also enables tax havens to use their commercialized sovereignty to resists anti-secrecy measures. What is being 'locked in' are the policy tools, not necessarily the policies. The changing relationship between trade and tax policies can also create new and unexpected tools for tackling tax evasion, underlining the importance of epistemic arbitrage in the context of new constitutionalism. In principle, political actors with sufficient technical and juridical knowledge can shape global tax governance to various directions regardless of their formal position in the world political hierarchies. This should be taken into account when trade treaties are being negotiated or revised.

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Section: Rethinking the Trade-tax Nexusmentioning

confidence: 99%

Panama and the WTO: new constitutionalism of trade policy and global tax governance

Eskelinen

Ylönen

2017

Review of International Political Economy

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“…The resulting biases point in different directions. They clearly inflate the economic role of secrecy jurisdictions and the so-called tax havens (Fichtner 2016;Garcia-Bernardo et al 2017). Whether they exaggerate the economic roles of richer or poorer countries is less obvious.…”

Section: Stealth-wealth Biasmentioning

confidence: 99%

International Economic Statistics: Biased Arbiters in Global Affairs?

Mügge

2019

Fudan J. Hum. Soc. Sci.

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International economic statistics play central roles in global economic governance. Governments and international organizations rely on them to monitor international economic agreements; governments use them to understand potential imbalances in bilateral relationships; and international investors build their country assessments on such data. These statistics increasingly suffer from serious defects, however, due to globalization, the digitization of our economies, and the prominence of secrecy jurisdictions and multinational corporations. For that reason, economic data is not a neutral arbiter in international affairs. Instead, it suffers from four kinds of bias: Expert attention bias means that the objects of measurement-what they are meant to capture-depend on the preoccupations of the small circle of statistical experts. Countability bias skews economic figures in favor of countable objects and away from, for example, unremunerated labor and production as well as ephemeral economic process, such as knowledge production. Capitalist bias emerges because economic statistics naturalize unequal power relations in the global economy: They mistake a country's inability to fetch high prices for its products for low productivity and a lack of added value. Stealth-wealth bias, finally, means that statistics naturalize the distorted image we have of the global economy as corporations and individual hide profits and wealth in secrecy jurisdictions. This article cautions against an insufficiently critical use of statistics in international affairs. And it encourages policymakers to "know thy data" lest biases in the numbers generate skewed policies, unnecessary disputes and a gradual delegitimization of statistics in general.

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“…To date, research on the geographies of corporate networks in the Asia-Pacific region has been surprisingly limited (cf. Derudder et al, 2018;Horner, 2014;Lai, 2012;Yang, & Coe, 2009;Yeung, 2014), and that on THOFC in the region has been largely confined to the fields of political economy, law, and economics (Brook, & McGrew, 2013;Buckley et al, 2010;Fichtner, 2016). However, as the global economic center of gravity shifts toward the Asia-Pacific region, so should the focus on the role of THOFC for MNCs operating there allowing a better understanding of just how global the 'tax issue' is.…”

Section: The Emergence Of Asia-pacific Multinational Firm Activitymentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of tax havens and offshore financial centers in Asia-Pacific networks: evidence from firm-subsidiary connections

et al. 2018

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This paper adds a network dimension to locational theories on multinational corporate strategy to explain how tax havens and offshore financial centers (THOFC) are integrated into the structures of firms listed on five stock exchanges of the Asia-Pacific region. Applying network analysis to firm-subsidiary connections of these listed firms, it highlights differences in the connectivity structures as well as the role of THOFC in exchange subnetworks. It finds considerable variation in the complexity of corporate structures by stock exchange can be explained by national context and multinational location strategies, and that the prevalence of THOFC within corporate structures cannot be underestimated.

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The anatomy of the Cayman Islands offshore financial center: Anglo-America, Japan, and the role of hedge funds

Abstract: The Cayman

Cited by 51 publications

References 41 publications

Panama and the WTO: new constitutionalism of trade policy and global tax governance

Panama and the WTO: new constitutionalism of trade policy and global tax governance

International Economic Statistics: Biased Arbiters in Global Affairs?

The role of tax havens and offshore financial centers in Asia-Pacific networks: evidence from firm-subsidiary connections

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