scholarly journals “An Unacceptable Surrender of Fiscal Sovereignty”: The Neoliberal Turn to International Tax Arbitration

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Martin Hearson ◽  
Todd N. Tucker

The growth of inequality over the past half century is closely connected to the rise of neoliberal policies and institutions, the latter of which shield capital from state actions that might limit wealth accumulation. Economic nationalism since the global financial crisis has slowed or even reversed this, yet this same era has seen the emergence of a new form of instrument in the neoliberal mold, in a stronghold of state sovereignty: taxation. Under mandatory binding tax arbitration, states cede sovereignty over the interpretation of international tax agreements to panels of transnational tax adjudicators. Focusing on the pivotal role of the United States, we use historical documents, including from the congressional archive and interviews with key actors to ask why tax arbitration emerged late in the neoliberal era, and at a counterintuitive time. We demonstrate that this outcome is the result of instrumental business power driving a process of incremental change through layering, to overcome states’ preference to retain sovereignty. This experience sheds light on the historically structured ways that business power constrains sovereignty in an era of high inequality.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Milan Babic ◽  
Jouke Huijzer ◽  
Diliara Valeeva ◽  
Javier Garcia-Bernardo

The global financial crisis of 2008, its following bank bailouts and associated corporate impunity sparked a renewed interest in the concept of the structural power of business and the question of “who rules?” in capitalist societies. This new wave of scholarship mitigated some of the problems of the original, theory-driven discussions from the 1970s and 80s. But despite significant advancements in the empirical identification of business power, we lack a unified framework for studying its working mechanisms. So-called “hybrid approaches”, integrating instrumental and structural power into their analyses, display high potential for such a unified and easily applicable framework. We build on this hybrid tradition and propose a novel model that integrates instrumental and structural power analysis into a basic framework. With this, we go beyond the often rigid division between instrumental and structural power forms and integrate the role of perceptions as key for understanding the dynamics of business power over time. We illustrate this parsimonious framework by an analysis of the plans of the Dutch government to abolish a dividend tax in 2018 that would have benefited a number of large multinationals but collapsed before implementation.


2020 ◽  
pp. 35-41
Author(s):  
ELGUJA MEKVABISHVILI

A system that is a mixed economy has established in modern post-industrial countries and the participation of the state in it is very important. The active role of the state is especially evident in extreme situations, as evidenced by the experience of the most acute of the 21st century - the global financial crisis and the coronary crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. Against the background of the implemented and ongoing changes in the economies of world and nation states in economic theory today we see the revival of the Keynesian doctrine. This doctrine withdrew the United States of America, as well as other countries, out of the worst crisis of the 20th century, out of the so-called „The Great Depression“ and it has been a major factor in the unprecedented economic success of these countries during four decades. A comparative analysis of the global financial and economic crises shows that the state not only plays a leading role in the process of rescuing economies from the crisis, but also its participation in post-crisis development, which implies the so-called Performing the function of «bridge management». Based on the experience of the coronary crisis, in order to ensure the stability and development of the Georgian economy, we consider it necessary: • Based on finding and using local resources, the state should implement economic policies aimed at accelerating the development of the real sector of the economy, diversifying the internal food market, reducing the negative foreign trade balance of agri-food products. This does not mean prioritizing import-substituting production, but focusing on the development of local production of products whose resources currently exist in our country; • The state must create strategic reserves of food, medical supplies and basic necessities, which are vital in a rapidly changing global environment full of uncertainty and risk; • Attitudes towards the tourism sector need to be changed substantially. After the end of the pandemic, the world will return to normal life and the number of tourists entering Georgia will increase again. However, given the lessons of the pandemic, we must bear in mind that it is necessary to: a) move to an intensive model of tourism; B) Organic inclusion of tourism in the local value chain; C) Pay more attention to the development of local tourism.


2022 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Milan Babic ◽  
Jouke Huijzer ◽  
Javier Garcia-Bernardo ◽  
Diliara Valeeva

Abstract The global financial crisis of 2008, its following bank bailouts, and associated corporate impunity sparked a renewed interest in the concept of the structural power of business and the question of “who rules?” in capitalist societies. This new wave of scholarship mitigated some of the problems of the original, theory-driven discussions from the 1970s and 1980s. But despite significant advancements in the empirical identification of business power, we lack a unified framework for studying its working mechanisms. So-called hybrid approaches, drawing on instrumental and structural power for their analyses, display high potential for such a unified and easily applicable framework. We build on this hybrid tradition and propose a novel model that integrates instrumental and structural power analysis into a basic framework. With this, we recalibrate the often rigid division between instrumental and structural power forms and emphasize the role of perceptions as key for understanding the dynamics of business power over time. We illustrate this parsimonious framework by an analysis of the plans of the Dutch government to abolish a dividend tax in 2018 that would have benefited a number of large multinationals but collapsed before implementation.


2016 ◽  
pp. 26-46
Author(s):  
Marcin Jan Flotyński

The global financial crisis in 2007–2009 began a period of high volatility on the financial markets. Specifically, it caused an increased amplitude of fluctuations of the level of gross domestic products, the level of investment and consumption and exchange rates in particular countries. To address the adverse market circumstances, governments and central banks took actions in order to bolster the weakening global economy. The aim of this article is to present the anti-crisis actions in the United States and selected member states of the European Union, including Poland, and an assessment of their efficiency. The analysis conducted indicates that generally the actions taken in the United States in response to the crisis were faster and more adequate to the existing circumstances than in the European Union.


Author(s):  
Irene Spagna

This chapter analyzes the growth of OTC derivatives before the global financial crisis of 2008 and the role of credit default swaps, in particular, in the near collapse of the global economy. It begins by exploring the basic characteristics of derivatives used as risk management instruments by investors to hedge against or exploit the volatility of asset prices. The analysis further reveals that the pre-crisis period was characterized by a broad-based consensus favoring deregulated markets and globally designed private rules. While not always unanimously supported, permissive public regulatory choices were often encouraged by interest group lobbying, the market-friendly views of many domestic authorities, and concerns about regulatory uncertainty and international competitiveness.


Author(s):  
Steven L Schwarcz

Securitisation represents a significant worldwide source of capital market financing. European investors commonly invest in asset-backed securities issued in U.S. securitisation transactions, and vice versa One of the key goals of the European Commission's proposed Capital Markets Union (CMU) is to further facilitate securitisation as a source of capital market financing as a viable alternative to bank-based finance for companies operating in the EU. To that end, this chapter explains securitisation and attempts to put its rise, its decline after the global financial crisis, and its recent CMU-inspired revival into a global perspective. It examines not only securitisation's relationship to the financial crisis but also post-crisis comparative regulatory approaches in the EU and the United States.


SAGE Open ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 215824402110326
Author(s):  
Lin Liu

This paper presents new empirical evidence concerning the time-varying responses of China’s macroeconomy to U.S. economic uncertainty shocks through a novel TVP-VAR model. The results robustly reveal that a rise in U.S. economic uncertainty would exert sizable, persistent, and significant detrimental effects on China’s gross domestic product (GDP), price level, and short-term interest rate during the period when common shocks take place, such as the global financial crisis around 2008, whereas small and transient effects in the tranquil times. Therefore, China should diversify its international linkages and gradually reduce the dependence on the United States into a certain range to shield the domestic economy, as well as improve the independence of monetary policy. Furthermore, to withstand unfavorable external shocks, China should be prudent on greater opening-up and carry out more intensive intervention when common shocks hit the world economy. Finally, investors should be alert to the potential detrimental impact of U.S. economic uncertainty on Chinese assets’ fundamentals.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Наталия Александровна Иванова

Актуальность исследования для экономики усиливается такими явлениями, как влияние мирового финансового кризиса, усложнение отраслевой и территориальной структуры производства, усиление интеграции всех сфер общественной жизни, возрастание значения экологических, социальных и политических факторов развития общества, повышение трансакционных издержек принятия решений в сфере управления. Изучение литературы о территориях дает основание определить понятие региональной системы России как элемент, подсистему некоторой иерархической системы, в роли которой выступает национальная экономика. Процессы глобализации коренным образом изменяют роль регионов в национальной экономике. Регион постепенно становится не только отдельным экономическим агентом, но также вступает в мировые конкурентные процессы. Положение территориально-организованных систем оказывается зависимым не только от макроэкономических условий или возможностей самих регионов, но также от расстановки конкурентных сил, механизмов взаимодействия регионов с другими субъектами. В этой связи возникает необходимость системных исследований с целью выработки комплекса мер, которые будут способствовать повышению конкурентоспособности экономики в целом, ее регионов в частности. Существующий инструментарий региональной экономики является уже недостаточным для анализа такого рода проблем, а традиционный конкурентный анализ не рассматривает регионы в качестве субъектов конкуренции. Требуется расширение и применение новых теоретических подходов к анализу региональных экономических систем и эффективности их развития, формированию целостной концепции развития территориальной организации хозяйства, что обусловило актуальность данного исследования. The relevance of the study for the economy is enhanced by such phenomena as the impact of the global financial crisis, the complication of the sectoral and territorial structure of production, the strengthening of integration of all spheres of public life, the increasing importance of environmental, social and political factors in the development of society, the increase in transaction costs of decision-making in the field of management. The study of the literature on territories gives grounds to define the concept of the regional system of Russia as an element, a subsystem of some hierarchical system, in the role of which the national economy acts. The processes of globalization are fundamentally changing the role of regions in the national economy. The region is gradually becoming not only a separate economic agent, but also enters into global competitive processes. The position of geographically organized systems turns out to depend not only on the macroeconomic conditions or the capabilities of the regions themselves, but also on the alignment of competitive forces, the mechanisms of interaction of regions with other entities. In this regard, there is a need for systematic research in order to develop a set of measures that will contribute to improving the competitiveness of the economy as a whole, its regions in particular. The existing tools of the regional economy are no longer sufficient to analyze such problems, and traditional competitive analysis does not consider regions as subjects of competition. It requires the expansion and application of new theoretical approaches to the analysis of regional economic systems and the effectiveness of their development, the formation of an integral concept of the development of the territorial organization of the economy, which determined the relevance of this study.


Author(s):  
Christoph Nitschke ◽  
Mark Rose

U.S. history is full of frequent and often devastating financial crises. They have coincided with business cycle downturns, but they have been rooted in the political design of markets. Financial crises have also drawn from changes in the underpinning cultures, knowledge systems, and ideologies of marketplace transactions. The United States’ political and economic development spawned, guided, and modified general factors in crisis causation. Broadly viewed, the reasons for financial crises have been recurrent in their form but historically specific in their configuration: causation has always revolved around relatively sudden reversals of investor perceptions of commercial growth, stock market gains, monetary availability, currency stability, and political predictability. The United States’ 19th-century financial crises, which happened in rapid succession, are best described as disturbances tied to market making, nation building, and empire creation. Ongoing changes in America’s financial system aided rapid national growth through the efficient distribution of credit to a spatially and organizationally changing economy. But complex political processes—whether Western expansion, the development of incorporation laws, or the nation’s foreign relations—also underlay the easy availability of credit. The relationship between systemic instability and ideas and ideals of economic growth, politically enacted, was then mirrored in the 19th century. Following the “Golden Age” of crash-free capitalism in the two decades after the Second World War, the recurrence of financial crises in American history coincided with the dominance of the market in statecraft. Banking and other crises were a product of political economy. The Global Financial Crisis of 2007–2008 not only once again changed the regulatory environment in an attempt to correct past mistakes, but also considerably broadened the discursive situation of financial crises as academic topics.


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