F1ID 5100 - The International Political Economy of Offshore Financial Centers (NEW)

This course examines the international political economy of the offshore world. Offshore financial centres (OFC) are the hidden infrastructure of the world economy. These jurisdictions cater to a global, non-resident clientele of firms and High Net Worth Individuals by providing low or non-existent taxation, light regulation, easy company incorporation rules and, crucially, secrecy. While offshore services are legal, they can be and are often used for illicit activities. The paper is dedicated to addressing theoretical and empirical questions including: what are the historical origins of offshore? Is it an anomaly, or a constituent element of contemporary globalization? What are the economic and political implications of offshore for “onshore” jurisdictions? Which professional services facilitate access to the offshore world and through which mechanisms? What are the global policy responses to the tax and regulatory implications of OFCs, and do they work? How do rising powers challenging western hegemony fit into offshore practices? And is offshore compatible with poverty alleviation and economic development in the Global South? The course will source a wide array of case materials both thematically and across a global geography.

Course outline

• The Origins of the Offshore World and its impact on global development
• The Politics of Financial Liberalization, 1950s to the 1980s
• Advanced Business Services as Offshore Facilitators
• The Pushback Against Offshore 1: Focus on Illicit Finance
• The Pushback Against Offshore 2: Global Taxation
• The Offshore World and Global Elites
• Wealth Management and the Offshore World
• Kleptocratic regimes and the Offshore World
• Global Corporations, Foreign Direct Investment and the Offshore world
• Case Study: Africa and the Offshore World
• Offshore and the Rest: The Politics of non-western demand and supply
• The Future of Offshore and Global Development

Learning Outcomes

By the end of the course, the students will be able to:

• Situate the history and present roles of offshore financial centres within a wider understanding of international politics and the functioning of the global economy
• Understand the centrality of professional business services for the articulation of onshore-offshore legal and financial transactions
• Evaluate evolving national and global regulatory efforts to reform the offshore world
• Identify and discuss variations in service provision and regulatory frameworks across different offshore financial centers, as well as the complimentary relationships between them
• Explain innovations in the offshore world since the 2008 financial crisis and the central role of non-western states in its functioning
• Examine case studies of offshore jurisdictions as well as those of states impacted (for instance, fiscally) by their interactions with offshore financial centres

Professional Skills

• Students will learn to examine complex issues pertaining to the global political economy of offshore financial centres from a multidisciplinary perspective (including international relations and political economy, financial geography, law and economics).
• Students will learn to research across a wide and often dispersed range of primary and secondary sources.
• Students will learn to work both individually and in groups.

None

There will be biweekly office hours for the course which will provide the opportunity for students to receive feedback and pedagogical guidance as well as clarifications about aspects of the course.

• In-class group activities (10% of the final grade)
• Oral presentation (20 % of the final grade)
• Interim essay, 2000 words (20% of the final grade)
• Final examination (50% of the final grade)

• In Class Presence: 24 hours a semester
• Reading and Preparation for Class: 60 hours a semester
• Research and Preparation for Group Work: 30 hours a semester
• Research and Writing for Individual Assessments: 30 hours a semester