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This collective book offers a panorama of the history of tax evasion, tax avoidance and tax havens from the nineteenth century to the present day, based on the latest research in contemporary history. It aims to show that this phenomenon is at the heart of global capitalism, partly as a response of the ruling classes to the rise of progressive taxation, but for other reasons too: notably the development of a powerful tax evasion and avoidance industry in different countries. The book argues that tax competition between states has stimulated the development of tax havens. It discusses the notion of the ‘tax haven’ and proposes a more rigorous concept - that of the ‘tax predator’. Finally, the book sheds light on the socio-political conflicts that have developed around tax evasion and the way in which states have fought against or tolerated the phenomenon.
Tax evasion, tax avoidance and tax resistance are widespread phenomena in political, economic, social and fiscal history from antiquity through medieval, early modern and modern times. Histories of Tax Evasion, Avoidance and Resistance shows how different groups and individuals around the globe have succeeded or failed in not paying their due taxes, whether in kind or in cash, on their properties or on their crops. It analyses how, throughout history, wealthy and poor taxpayers have tried to avoid or reduce their tax burden by negotiating with tax authorities, through practices of legal or illegal tax evasion, by filing lawsuits, seeking armed resistance or by migration, and how state author...
A dynamic social history of shadow capitalism spanning the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries Observers see free markets, the relentless pursuit of profit, and the unremitting drive to commodify everything as capitalism's defining characteristics. These most visible economic features, however, obscure a range of other less evident, often unmeasured activities that occur on the margins and in the concealed corners of the formal economy. The range of practices in this large and diverse hidden realm encompasses traders in recycled materials and the architects of junk bonds and shadow banking. It includes the black and semi-licit markets that allow wealthy elites to avoid taxes and the unme...
This book is a detailed account of the evolution and theory of multinational trading companies. The book features contributions from an international selection of US, European and Asian economists and business historians which demonstrate the importance of trading companies in trade and investment flows in the world economy from the nineteenth century to the present. The authors adopt evolutionary and comparative perspectives to examine diversification strategies and organizational structures. This innovative study provides a major new dimension to our knowledge of the history and theory of international business.
In Switzerland and Sub-Saharan Africa in the Cold War, 1967-1979, Sabina Widmer analyses Swiss foreign policy in Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, and Somalia in the late 1960s and 1970s, at the crossroads of the global East-West confrontation and decolonisation. Focusing on the independence wars in Angola and Mozambique, the Angolan War and the Ogaden War as well as regime changes that brought Soviet-allied governments to power, this book sheds new light on Switzerland’s role in the Third World during the Cold War. Based on extensive multi-archival research, it exposes the limits of neutrality in North-South relations, reveals the growing marge de manoeuvre of small states during Détente, and highlights the role of non-state actors in the making of foreign policy.
“Money, money, and more money.” In the eyes of early modern warlords, these were the three essential prerequisites for waging war. The transnational studies presented here describe and explain how belligerent powers did indeed rely on thriving markets where military entrepreneurs provided mercenaries, weapons, money, credit, food, expertise, and other services. In a fresh and comprehensive examination of pre-national military entrepreneurship – its actors, structures and economic logic – this volume shows how readily business relationships for supplying armies in the 17th and 18th centuries crossed territorial and confessional boundaries. By outlining and explicating early modern military entrepreneurial fields of action, this new transnational perspective transcends the limits of national historical approaches to the business of war. Contributors are Astrid Ackermann, John Condren, Jasmina Cornut, Michael Depreter, Sébastien Dupuis, Marian Füssel, Julien Grand, André Holenstein, Katrin Keller, Michael Paul Martoccio, Tim Neu, David Parrott, Alexander Querengässer, Philippe Rogger, Guy Rowlands, Benjamin Ryser, Regula Schmid, and Peter H. Wilson.
How should a free society protect privacy? Dramatic changes in national security law and surveillance, as well as technological changes from social media to smart cities mean that our ideas about privacy and its protection are being challenged like never before. In this interdisciplinary book, Chris Berg explores what classical liberal approaches to privacy can bring to current debates about surveillance, encryption and new financial technologies. Ultimately, he argues that the principles of classical liberalism – the rule of law, individual rights, property and entrepreneurial evolution – can help extend as well as critique contemporary philosophical theories of privacy.
This edited collection explores the pivotal role of the hotel industry in building Western Europe’s tourism economy during the 20th century. The book brings together ten contributions focused on the same period, 1900-1970, to offer comparative perspectives from across the region including Italy, Switzerland, France, Spain and Britain. Drawing on historical case studies, chapters illuminate the different factors linking hotels and the broader tourism system including interventions of the public authorities and the State, the importance of private involvement, commercial strategies, the medium-term development of private hotels, hotel entrepreneurship, and the impact of economic crises and wars. By placing differing national approaches taken to the growth of the hotel industry in comparison, the book aims to fill a gap in the historiography of European hospitality and shed light on the wider impact of hotels and tourism on economic development at both a national and regional level. It will be of interest to a range of scholars, including in economic and business history, tourism studies, the history of tourism management, and social history.
Most European countries are rather small, yet we know little about their monetary history. This book analyses for the first time the experience of seven small states (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, The Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland) during the last hundred years, starting with the restoration of the gold standard after World War I and ending with Sweden's rejection of the Euro in 2003. The comparative analysis shows that for the most part of the twentieth century the options of policy makers were seriously constrained by a distinct fear of floating exchange rates. Only with the crisis of the European Monetary System (EMS) in 1992–3 did the idea that a flexible exchange rate regime was suited for a small open economy gain currency. The book also analyses the differences among small states and concludes that economic structures or foreign policy orientations were far more important for the timing of regime changes than domestic institutions and policies.