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Why are Multinational Corporations so powerful and elites so wealthy while still operating within nation-state rules? Profit and Power examines how firms engage in legal transgression, operating at the edges of legality to maximize profits. Offering a practical analysis of jurisdictional arbitrage, Ronen Palan exposes the hidden mechanisms behind corporate power in globalization and reveals how the rule-based transgressor elite emerged through strategic use of MNC structures. Tracing the origins to the late nineteenth century, Palan focuses on centrally-coordinated multi-corporate enterprises (CCMCEs) - networks of legally independent yet interconnected firms. He explores the gap between the legal entity and the corporate group, a loophole long exploited to arbitrage national regulations, including taxation. This is the first systematic study of jurisdictional arbitrage and its impact on states and society. By analysing corporate decision-making within fragmented regulatory environments, it unveils the systemic role of legal ambiguity in shaping modern capitalism and corporate dominance.
List of contents
Introduction; 1. Decoding jurisdictional arbitrage: strategies, implications, and global dynamics; 2. The advent of the centrally coordinated multi-corporate enterprise; 3. Tools of trade; 4. Corporate tax arbitrage; 5. How the European Union became a facilitator of global corporate tax avoidance; 6. A world of fuses and splitters; 7. How not to tell by telling: reporting and disclosure arbitrage; 8. Geopolitics and jurisdictional arbitrage: does the US arbitrage the world?; 9: The hidden empire: how MNCs redefine power through arbitrage; Conclusions.
About the author
Ronen Palan is Professor of International Political Economy at City St George's University of London. He was the founding editor of the Review of International Political Economy and his previous books include Sabotage: The Business of Finance (with Anastasia Nesvetailova, 2020), Tax Havens: How Globalization Really Works (with Richard Murphy and Christian Chavagneux, 2010) and The Offshore World (2003).
