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The Whiteness of Wealth Management: Colonial Economic Structure, Racism, and the Emergence of Tax Havens in the Global South

Descrizione del progetto

Comprendere l’enigma dei paradisi fiscali tropicali

Le isole tropicali sono spesso etichettate come paradisi fiscali, eppure sono poche quelle che hanno veramente prosperato grazie al ruolo di esportatori di servizi finanziari. Sorge pertanto spontaneo chiedersi perché queste isole non abbiano abbracciato tutte allo stesso modo tale strategia di sviluppo. In questo contesto, il progetto WOWMA, finanziato dall’UE, esplorerà il ruolo svolto dalla stabilità politica e dalla «bianchezza» nell’attrarre capitali stranieri con l’obiettivo di rimodellare la nostra comprensione dei paradisi fiscali e delle forze che ne determinano la progressiva affermazione. Il progetto propone una teoria che stabilisce connessioni tra la struttura economica di un’isola durante il dominio coloniale, la mancanza di imposte sul reddito e la persistenza dell’oligarchia bianca applicando metodi di inferenza causale a dati storici originali raccolti da fonti d’archivio.

Obiettivo

Tropical islands are often stigmatized as tax havens. But only a few tropical islands are important exporters of financial services. This is surprising since many of them feature attributes associated with tax havenry. They are small, sovereign, reachable from major financial centers within a few hours, and practice British common law. Why have so few applied tax havenry as a development strategy, nonetheless?
Conventional wisdom suggests that political stability, often measured with contemporary indicators of good governance, makes the difference. The perception of political stability among foreign investors is, however, interwoven with racist biases. Previous research shows that tropical islands had to emphasize their British heritage, essentially a code for whiteness, to attract foreign capital during decolonization.
WOWMA’s objective is thus to explain why some tropical island jurisdictions were better able than others to convey stability through an image of whiteness in this historical period. In contrast to previous research emphasizing the rule of law, WOWMA investigates the hypothesis that the absence of income taxes paired with white control over government distinguished emerging tax havens from other tropical islands.
To this end, WOWMA (1) proposes a new theory on the emergence of tax havenry in the Global South, linking an island’s economic structure under colonial rule to the absence of income taxes and the persistence of white oligarchy; (2) applies causal inference methods on original historical data gathered from archival sources; and (3) probes the persistence of racist biases in investment decisions through conjoint experiments.
The project provides unprecedented depth in the study of small island states’ political and economic development. It foregrounds the entanglement of racism with perceptions of political stability and develops new strategies for its measurement.

Campo scientifico (EuroSciVoc)

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Istituzione ospitante

LEUPHANA UNIVERSITAT LUNEBURG
Contributo netto dell'UE
€ 1 499 721,00
Indirizzo
UNIVERSITAETSALLEE 1
21335 LUNEBURG
Germania
Regione
Niedersachsen Lüneburg Lüneburg, Landkreis
Tipo di attività
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Collegamenti
Costo totale
€ 1 499 721,00

Beneficiari (2)