Seminar: The Impact of Tax Havens on Development

This seminar is organized in the framework of the ASC collaborative research project 'Rethinking Africa's global connections'

Most developing countries do not possess sophisticated tax systems. Typically, they are often characterized by large under-taxed informal economies, and in some of the worst cases, economies that not taxed at all. Yet, if tax havens have played a significant role in shaping the economies of developed countries, arguably, they play an even greater role in shaping the lives of those who live in developing countries. This paper discusses current scholarship that assesses the impact of the tax havens phenomenon on development.

Ronen Palan is Professor of International Political Economy at City University, London. Prior to that, he was a professor of International Political Economy at Birmingham and Sussex Universities. He is the co-author of ‘Tax Havens: How Globalization Really Works’, 2010, Cornell University Press (with Richard Murphy and Christian Chavagneux) and the author of the ‘Offshore World’, 2004, Cornell University Press.