IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/accfor/v27y2003i4p365-399.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Role of Offshore Financial Centres in Globalization

Author

Listed:
  • Prem Sikka

Abstract

Capitalism is inherently crisis‐ridden, but shows little sign of exhausting itself. It continues to develop new ways of reinvigorating itself and generating economic returns for capital. Globalization is considered to be the most advanced phase of capitalism. The Offshore Financial Centres (OFCs; also known as tax havens) are an integral part of globalization. They facilitate growing mobility of finance by providing no/low tax, no/low regulation, secrecy and anonymity to enable footloose capital to roam the world. Their policies play a key role in tax avoidance/evasion, money laundering, flight of capital, degradation of regulation, instability and economic underdevelopment, and have serious consequences for people everywhere. Professional intermediaries, such as accountants and lawyers, play a key role in the development and expansion of OFCs. Despite the veneer of liberal democracy, some OFCs are captured by the finance industry and advance the interests of financial capital. Many OFCs are nurtured and protected by leading Western hegemons with developed capital and financial markets. This paper encourages scholars to study the operations, functions, policies and politics of OFCs by drawing attention to their significance and impact on societies.

Suggested Citation

  • Prem Sikka, 2003. "The Role of Offshore Financial Centres in Globalization," Accounting Forum, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 27(4), pages 365-399, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:accfor:v:27:y:2003:i:4:p:365-399
    DOI: 10.1046/j.1467-6303.2003.t01-2-00111.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1046/j.1467-6303.2003.t01-2-00111.x
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1046/j.1467-6303.2003.t01-2-00111.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Sikka, Prem, 2010. "Smoke and mirrors: Corporate social responsibility and tax avoidance," Accounting forum, Elsevier, vol. 34(3), pages 153-168.
    2. Otusanya, Olatunde Julius, 2011. "The role of multinational companies in tax evasion and tax avoidance: The case of Nigeria," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 22(3), pages 316-332.
    3. Bakre, Owolabi M. & Lauwo, Sarah, 2016. "Privatisation and accountability in a “crony capitalist” Nigerian state," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 45-58.
    4. Adams, Dawda & Adams, Kweku & Ullah, Subhan & Ullah, Farid, 2019. "Globalisation, governance, accountability and the natural resource ‘curse’: Implications for socio-economic growth of oil-rich developing countries," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 128-140.
    5. Adams, Dawda & Adams, Kweku & Attah-Boakye, Rexford & Ullah, Subhan & Rodgers, Waymond & Kimani, Danson, 2022. "Social and environmental practices and corporate financial performance of multinational corporations in emerging markets: Evidence from 20 oil-rich African countries," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    6. Andrew van Hulten & Michael Webber, 2010. "Do developing countries need 'good' institutions and policies and deep financial markets to benefit from capital account liberalization?," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 10(2), pages 283-319, March.
    7. Sikka, Prem & Willmott, Hugh, 2010. "The dark side of transfer pricing: Its role in tax avoidance and wealth retentiveness," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 21(4), pages 342-356.
    8. Michael, Bryane & Wojick, Dariusz & Arner, Douglas W. & Tong, Wilson & Lin, Chen & Zhao, Simon, 2015. "What Determines M&A Legal and Financial Advisors’ Competitiveness in an International Financial Centre: Using China’s Going Out Policy as a Natural Experiment," EconStor Preprints 110603, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    9. Alistair M. Brown, 2006. "The Financial Milieu of the IASB and AASB," Australian Accounting Review, CPA Australia, vol. 16(38), pages 85-95, March.
    10. Baptiste Souillard, 2022. "Profit Shifting, Employee Pay, and Inequalities: Evidence from US-Listed Companies," CESifo Working Paper Series 9720, CESifo.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:accfor:v:27:y:2003:i:4:p:365-399. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/racc .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.