Questions have been raised regarding the role of low-tax offshore jurisdictions in the global financial crisis, based largely on evidence that many problematic asset-backed securities were issued from or listed in the Cayman Islands, Jersey, Ireland, and other ‘offshore' sites. However, there...

Here we present a novel analysis of the development of offshore banking since 1980, which addresses important but still - unanswered questions about the both the role of offshore centers in the global financial crisis, and the post-crisis stability of these centers. We show that post-1980...

Lying at the heart of offshore finance is a basic contradiction. On the one hand, offshore finance is fundamentally driven by the desire to protect private property from the state; on the other hand, this property is itself ultimately dependent on the protection of the state. This dilemma has...