The offshore world : sovereign markets, virtual places, and nomad millionaires / Ronen Palan.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Palan, Ronen, 1957-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Investments, Foreign.

Investments, Foreign--Law and legislation.

Physical Description:

225 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 2003.

Summary:

The atlas of contemporary capitalism is curious indeed. A desperately poor and civil-war-wracked nation, Liberia, is the world's shipping superpower; the Cayman Islands the fifth-largest financial center in the world; land-locked Zurich a venerable "offshore" banking center. Indeed, it is estimated that half of the global stock of money passes through tax havens. The logic of the offshore world, where millionaires and corporations roam in search of financial advantage, is slippery. It challenges many conventional assumptions about power and economics. In the single most comprehensive account of the offshore economy, Ronen Palan investigates the legal spaces, unregulated and yet maintained and supported by the state system, that have emerged for purposes of international finance, tax havens, export processing zones, flags of convenience, and e-commerce. The offshore economy had its beginnings in the late nineteenth century, saw early development after the First World War, and metastasized in the 1970s. Palan believes that a rapidly expanding offshore economy is now producing a new market in sovereignty; states have discovered that their authority to create law may be used as a commercial asset. This commercialization of sovereignty, he asserts, undermines the legitimacy of the nation-state and supports a form of nomadic capitalism.

Contents:

The offshore economy in its contemporary settings

State, capital, and the production of offshore

The emergence of embryonic forms of offshore

The growth of an offshore economy

Offshore and the internationalization of the state

Offshore and the demise of the nation-state.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [203]-219) and index.

ISBN:

0801440556

OCLC:

51210662