Combating Fiscal Fraud and Empowering Regulators, 2021
This chapter delves into the inner sanctum of corporate organization in order to find evidence of... more This chapter delves into the inner sanctum of corporate organization in order to find evidence of rise or decline in the use of techniques of tax arbitrage by the corporate sector within the EU region. We follow then with an analysis of the use of sophisticated financial instruments in tax mitigation techniques in the EU to assess the impact of finance-oriented tax mitigation techniques. Our conclusion is not positive. It appears to us that in comparison with the US (and possibly China), the European fiscal regime failed to address a core political issue. These political conditions encourage the use of those diverging rules and regulations one against the other and affect jurisdictional arbitrage with the overall aim of tax mitigation. Europe is emerging as the playground for international corporations’ tax arbitrage and financial techniques of tax mitigation.
One of the many lingering questions posed by the continuing meltdown of global finance concerns t... more One of the many lingering questions posed by the continuing meltdown of global finance concerns the role of securitization and the so-called shadow banking system in amplifying the scope of the crisis. As the crisis has revealed, a crucial function of many shadow financial units such as special purpose vehicles (SPVs) has been to make complex debt structures marketable and liquid. To what extent can the financial malaise of 2007 be attributed to the widespread use of such schemes? And how can this problem be conceptualized in contemporary political economy? In this paper we address these questions, examining the case of Northern Rock and its offshore SPV structure, Granite Master Trust. Drawing on the financial instability framework of Hyman Minsky, we find that the collapse of Northern Rock was caused by a confluence of two institutional trends in modern finance. First, it is the tendency of financial firms to exploit the regulatory gap by relying on financial innovation; second, i...
Panel 3 evaluated 53 units in all, 22 institutional units and 31 research groups. The evaluation ... more Panel 3 evaluated 53 units in all, 22 institutional units and 31 research groups. The evaluation included university departments of political science, political scientists working in interdisciplin ...
Henk Overbeek (ed.) Restructuring Hegemony in the Global Political Economy: The Rise of Transnati... more Henk Overbeek (ed.) Restructuring Hegemony in the Global Political Economy: The Rise of Transnational Neoliberalism in the 1980s, London and New York: Routledge, 1992, viii + 293 pp., hbk, ISBN 0–415–05595–4.SMALL, BUT NOT SO BEAUTIFULR.A. Johns and C.M. Le Marchant, Finance Centres: British Isle Offshore Development Since 1979, London and New York: Pinter Publishers, 1993,306 pp., ISBN 0–86187–7993.Anthony B. Van
... political economy Ash Amin and Ronen Palan Department of Geography, University of Durham and ... more ... political economy Ash Amin and Ronen Palan Department of Geography, University of Durham and International Relations and Politics, University of Sussex INTRODUCTION Let us begin with some conundrums dare we say 'irrationalities' in international relations. ...
(1998). Luring buffaloes and the game of industrial subsidies: A critique of national competitive... more (1998). Luring buffaloes and the game of industrial subsidies: A critique of national competitive policies in the era of the competition state. Global Society: Vol. 12, No. 3, pp. 323-341.
1 Wages of Sin? the Crisis of the Libidinal Economy Anastasia Nesvetailova (City University, Lond... more 1 Wages of Sin? the Crisis of the Libidinal Economy Anastasia Nesvetailova (City University, London) Ronen Palan (University of Birmingham) Angus Cameron (University of Leicester) ... options, bonds and perks for generating revenues by any possible means, often vastly in ...
which deprived Cuba of about $4 billion in annual economic assistance. Without that aid, the capa... more which deprived Cuba of about $4 billion in annual economic assistance. Without that aid, the capacity to import shrank by about 75%. The economy went into a tailspin, losing 35-50% of GDP between 1989 and 1993 (but not 60% in a single year, as Schwab asserts on p. 71). To keep domestic production going as best it could, Cuba used scarce foreign exchange to import fuel and raw materials. There simply was no money for consumer goods, even such basics as food and medicine. The Cubans were not prevented from buying necessities by the U.S. embargo; Europe would have sold them most of these goods if they could have paid for them (albeit at higher cost). The structural cause of the crisis lies in Cuba's failure to diversify the economy away from sugar because of its role in the "socialist division of labor." When the socialist bloc disappeared, Cuba was left with an inefficient industry producing for a world sugar market characterized by a long-term decline in prices. The solution has been a major shift into tourism, which now surpasses sugar as producer of hard currency. The U.S. embargo has certainly impeded Cuba's ability to adjust. The U.S. travel ban limits the potential of the Cuban tourist industry; U.S. trade prohibitions raise the shipping costs to Cuba of buying and selling bulk commodities; and U.S. threats of litigation have probably limited the flow of foreign direct investment to the island. But the embargo is a hindrance, not the cause of Cuba's problems. By blaming the embargo for everything, Schwab misses the most interesting issue facing contemporary Cuba. Can a small country that is dependent on the international market (and therefore must organize its economy "efficiently" by market standards) maintain the sort of social and economic egalitarianism that has been a hallmark of the Cuban revolution? Schwab clearly admires the Cuban government's efforts to provide for basic social and economic needs, and he agrees with the notion that these are fundamental human rights at least on a par with political rights and liberties. He takes a less defensible step, however, when he counterposes socioeconomic rights to political ones, arguing that there is a necessary tradeoff between them. Elsewhere, Schwab has written critically of "Western" notions of human rights that give priority to political liberty at the expense of socioeconomic conditions. Here, he argues that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is essentially an expression of Western cultural chauvinism "imposed" on the Third World (p. 6). He quotes approvingly the Cuban government's argument that the exercise of individual rights must be subordinated to the common good and can be legitimately restricted when "their use would lead to the erosion of the goals of the revolution" (p. 8). Left unanswered is the question of who defines the common good and by what authority. The goals of the revolution have gone through many twists and turns in the forty years since Castro's barbudos (bearded ones) rode triumphantly into Havana. How long can a government continue to claim a mandate to rule based upon a political uprising that occurred before most Cubans alive today were born? Even more troubling is Schwab's insistence that socioeconomic rights and political rights are inherently in conflict. "If economic and social rights are primary within the context of what is good for the group as a whole . . . then individual political and civil rights, which conflict with the paramountcy of the larger group, must be denied" (p. 113). He makes no analytic case for this, other than to insist that since Western notions of political liberty emerged from the development of capitalist society, they had to be abandoned when Cuba rejected capitalism (pp. 59-60). By this facile logic, socialist democracy is an oxymoron; socialism requires authoritarianism. If we have learned anything from the failed socialist experiments of the twentieth century, we ought to have learned that without real democratic accountability, governments—even those that begin with the best intentions—end up serving their own interests rather than the public's. Descending from the theoretical to the practical, Schwab argues that the Cuban government's intolerance of dissent is due largely to a siege mentality instilled by forty years of conflict with the United States. Castro sees in every dissident a plot by Washington to overthrow the revolution. Governments seeking an excuse to repress their opponents always look for a foreign enemy to blame, but never has a government had such a perfect foil as Washington provides for Fidel Castro. Over the years, the United States has invaded Cuba, conducted paramilitary sabotage, tried to assassinate Castro, and, of course, maintained an economic embargo with the explicit purpose of bringing down the government. Cuban dissidents themselves report that when U.S.-Cuban relations relax a bit, they enjoy more political space, and when relations sour, they…
The concept of ‘finance’ or the ‘financial system’ can be confusing. The assumption is that the f... more The concept of ‘finance’ or the ‘financial system’ can be confusing. The assumption is that the financial system consists of related markets trading in a variety of financial instruments that are ultimately of a similar nature. In the late-19th century, however, financial assets have bifurcated into broadly two classes of property titles: incorporeal assets and intangible assets. This article argues that interrelations between the two classes of assets have generated pro-cyclical trends that are not dealt with by current regulation. It argues that these pro-cyclical trends can be even more confusing in the age of globalisation.
The economic rationale for austerity policies harks back to a highly controversial proposals that... more The economic rationale for austerity policies harks back to a highly controversial proposals that originated in the 1990s known as ‘expansionary fiscal contraction.’ This paper explores these ideas relating to austerity and suggests that matters have not worked out as George Osborne expected. Furthermore, since the broad assumptions made by HM Treasury and the OBR remain the same in 2015 as they were in 2010, the paper presents an argument why austerity plans for the period 2016–2020 are also unlikely to succeed. The core arguments in the paper can be summarised by the following bullet points: • Politically motivated suggestions that the economy crashed in 2007–08 because of Labour’s overspending are not supported by the data. Indeed, by the time it left office the Labour government had adopted a more realistic basis for economic forecasting than the following government. • In contrast to the generally perceived view, austerity only hit current spending per head from 2013 onwards, f...
Combating Fiscal Fraud and Empowering Regulators, 2021
This chapter delves into the inner sanctum of corporate organization in order to find evidence of... more This chapter delves into the inner sanctum of corporate organization in order to find evidence of rise or decline in the use of techniques of tax arbitrage by the corporate sector within the EU region. We follow then with an analysis of the use of sophisticated financial instruments in tax mitigation techniques in the EU to assess the impact of finance-oriented tax mitigation techniques. Our conclusion is not positive. It appears to us that in comparison with the US (and possibly China), the European fiscal regime failed to address a core political issue. These political conditions encourage the use of those diverging rules and regulations one against the other and affect jurisdictional arbitrage with the overall aim of tax mitigation. Europe is emerging as the playground for international corporations’ tax arbitrage and financial techniques of tax mitigation.
One of the many lingering questions posed by the continuing meltdown of global finance concerns t... more One of the many lingering questions posed by the continuing meltdown of global finance concerns the role of securitization and the so-called shadow banking system in amplifying the scope of the crisis. As the crisis has revealed, a crucial function of many shadow financial units such as special purpose vehicles (SPVs) has been to make complex debt structures marketable and liquid. To what extent can the financial malaise of 2007 be attributed to the widespread use of such schemes? And how can this problem be conceptualized in contemporary political economy? In this paper we address these questions, examining the case of Northern Rock and its offshore SPV structure, Granite Master Trust. Drawing on the financial instability framework of Hyman Minsky, we find that the collapse of Northern Rock was caused by a confluence of two institutional trends in modern finance. First, it is the tendency of financial firms to exploit the regulatory gap by relying on financial innovation; second, i...
Panel 3 evaluated 53 units in all, 22 institutional units and 31 research groups. The evaluation ... more Panel 3 evaluated 53 units in all, 22 institutional units and 31 research groups. The evaluation included university departments of political science, political scientists working in interdisciplin ...
Henk Overbeek (ed.) Restructuring Hegemony in the Global Political Economy: The Rise of Transnati... more Henk Overbeek (ed.) Restructuring Hegemony in the Global Political Economy: The Rise of Transnational Neoliberalism in the 1980s, London and New York: Routledge, 1992, viii + 293 pp., hbk, ISBN 0–415–05595–4.SMALL, BUT NOT SO BEAUTIFULR.A. Johns and C.M. Le Marchant, Finance Centres: British Isle Offshore Development Since 1979, London and New York: Pinter Publishers, 1993,306 pp., ISBN 0–86187–7993.Anthony B. Van
... political economy Ash Amin and Ronen Palan Department of Geography, University of Durham and ... more ... political economy Ash Amin and Ronen Palan Department of Geography, University of Durham and International Relations and Politics, University of Sussex INTRODUCTION Let us begin with some conundrums dare we say 'irrationalities' in international relations. ...
(1998). Luring buffaloes and the game of industrial subsidies: A critique of national competitive... more (1998). Luring buffaloes and the game of industrial subsidies: A critique of national competitive policies in the era of the competition state. Global Society: Vol. 12, No. 3, pp. 323-341.
1 Wages of Sin? the Crisis of the Libidinal Economy Anastasia Nesvetailova (City University, Lond... more 1 Wages of Sin? the Crisis of the Libidinal Economy Anastasia Nesvetailova (City University, London) Ronen Palan (University of Birmingham) Angus Cameron (University of Leicester) ... options, bonds and perks for generating revenues by any possible means, often vastly in ...
which deprived Cuba of about $4 billion in annual economic assistance. Without that aid, the capa... more which deprived Cuba of about $4 billion in annual economic assistance. Without that aid, the capacity to import shrank by about 75%. The economy went into a tailspin, losing 35-50% of GDP between 1989 and 1993 (but not 60% in a single year, as Schwab asserts on p. 71). To keep domestic production going as best it could, Cuba used scarce foreign exchange to import fuel and raw materials. There simply was no money for consumer goods, even such basics as food and medicine. The Cubans were not prevented from buying necessities by the U.S. embargo; Europe would have sold them most of these goods if they could have paid for them (albeit at higher cost). The structural cause of the crisis lies in Cuba's failure to diversify the economy away from sugar because of its role in the "socialist division of labor." When the socialist bloc disappeared, Cuba was left with an inefficient industry producing for a world sugar market characterized by a long-term decline in prices. The solution has been a major shift into tourism, which now surpasses sugar as producer of hard currency. The U.S. embargo has certainly impeded Cuba's ability to adjust. The U.S. travel ban limits the potential of the Cuban tourist industry; U.S. trade prohibitions raise the shipping costs to Cuba of buying and selling bulk commodities; and U.S. threats of litigation have probably limited the flow of foreign direct investment to the island. But the embargo is a hindrance, not the cause of Cuba's problems. By blaming the embargo for everything, Schwab misses the most interesting issue facing contemporary Cuba. Can a small country that is dependent on the international market (and therefore must organize its economy "efficiently" by market standards) maintain the sort of social and economic egalitarianism that has been a hallmark of the Cuban revolution? Schwab clearly admires the Cuban government's efforts to provide for basic social and economic needs, and he agrees with the notion that these are fundamental human rights at least on a par with political rights and liberties. He takes a less defensible step, however, when he counterposes socioeconomic rights to political ones, arguing that there is a necessary tradeoff between them. Elsewhere, Schwab has written critically of "Western" notions of human rights that give priority to political liberty at the expense of socioeconomic conditions. Here, he argues that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is essentially an expression of Western cultural chauvinism "imposed" on the Third World (p. 6). He quotes approvingly the Cuban government's argument that the exercise of individual rights must be subordinated to the common good and can be legitimately restricted when "their use would lead to the erosion of the goals of the revolution" (p. 8). Left unanswered is the question of who defines the common good and by what authority. The goals of the revolution have gone through many twists and turns in the forty years since Castro's barbudos (bearded ones) rode triumphantly into Havana. How long can a government continue to claim a mandate to rule based upon a political uprising that occurred before most Cubans alive today were born? Even more troubling is Schwab's insistence that socioeconomic rights and political rights are inherently in conflict. "If economic and social rights are primary within the context of what is good for the group as a whole . . . then individual political and civil rights, which conflict with the paramountcy of the larger group, must be denied" (p. 113). He makes no analytic case for this, other than to insist that since Western notions of political liberty emerged from the development of capitalist society, they had to be abandoned when Cuba rejected capitalism (pp. 59-60). By this facile logic, socialist democracy is an oxymoron; socialism requires authoritarianism. If we have learned anything from the failed socialist experiments of the twentieth century, we ought to have learned that without real democratic accountability, governments—even those that begin with the best intentions—end up serving their own interests rather than the public's. Descending from the theoretical to the practical, Schwab argues that the Cuban government's intolerance of dissent is due largely to a siege mentality instilled by forty years of conflict with the United States. Castro sees in every dissident a plot by Washington to overthrow the revolution. Governments seeking an excuse to repress their opponents always look for a foreign enemy to blame, but never has a government had such a perfect foil as Washington provides for Fidel Castro. Over the years, the United States has invaded Cuba, conducted paramilitary sabotage, tried to assassinate Castro, and, of course, maintained an economic embargo with the explicit purpose of bringing down the government. Cuban dissidents themselves report that when U.S.-Cuban relations relax a bit, they enjoy more political space, and when relations sour, they…
The concept of ‘finance’ or the ‘financial system’ can be confusing. The assumption is that the f... more The concept of ‘finance’ or the ‘financial system’ can be confusing. The assumption is that the financial system consists of related markets trading in a variety of financial instruments that are ultimately of a similar nature. In the late-19th century, however, financial assets have bifurcated into broadly two classes of property titles: incorporeal assets and intangible assets. This article argues that interrelations between the two classes of assets have generated pro-cyclical trends that are not dealt with by current regulation. It argues that these pro-cyclical trends can be even more confusing in the age of globalisation.
The economic rationale for austerity policies harks back to a highly controversial proposals that... more The economic rationale for austerity policies harks back to a highly controversial proposals that originated in the 1990s known as ‘expansionary fiscal contraction.’ This paper explores these ideas relating to austerity and suggests that matters have not worked out as George Osborne expected. Furthermore, since the broad assumptions made by HM Treasury and the OBR remain the same in 2015 as they were in 2010, the paper presents an argument why austerity plans for the period 2016–2020 are also unlikely to succeed. The core arguments in the paper can be summarised by the following bullet points: • Politically motivated suggestions that the economy crashed in 2007–08 because of Labour’s overspending are not supported by the data. Indeed, by the time it left office the Labour government had adopted a more realistic basis for economic forecasting than the following government. • In contrast to the generally perceived view, austerity only hit current spending per head from 2013 onwards, f...
Uploads
Papers by Ronen Palan