The Panama Papers and Thomas Piketty: How the Leak May Transform Politics

The Panama Papers—the massive collection of leaked documents from Mossack Fonseca, a Panamanian law firm that helps set up offshore shell corporations—have already had political consequences. Iceland’s prime minister, Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, resigned after the leak revealed that he had partly owned an offshore firm. David Cameron, the British prime minister, is facing criticism over an offshore company that his father set up. In Brazil, many of the people connected to the country’s unfolding corruption scandal appear to have held offshore shell companies set up by Mossack Fonseca. And in Russia, Sergei Roldugin, a cellist who

Access the full article here.

Other Writing:

Essay

This Year’s Economics Nobel winner Invented a Tool That’s Both Brilliant and Undemocratic

Richard Thaler, of the University of Chicago, just won the Nobel Memorial Prize in economics for his contribution to behavioral economics — the subfield known for exploring how psychological biases cause people to act in ways that diverge from pure rational self-interest. Policymakers are more likely to know him for a different reason. Together with ...
Read Article
Academic Article

“Legislate or Delegate? Bargaining over Implementation and Legislative Authority in the European Union”

In this article we explain how actors’ ability to bargain successfully in order to advance their institutional preferences has changed over time as a function of the particular institutional context. We show how actors use their bargaining power under given institutional rules in order to shift the existing balance between legislation and delegation, and shift ...
Read Article