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

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Essay

The Wrong Way to Punish Iran with Abraham Newman

During the war on terror, the United States quietly turned the world financial system into a hidden empire. The American government used the power of the dollar and its influence over obscure organizations such as the Swift financial messaging service to monitor what its adversaries and terrorists were doing and, in some cases, to cut ...
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Academic Article

Trust, Institutions and Institutional Evolution: Industrial Districts and the Social Capital Hypothesis – with Jack Knight

Much current work in the social sciences seeks to understand the effects of trust and social capital on economic and political outcomes. However, the sources of trust remain unclear. In this article, the authors articulate a basic theory of the relationship between institutions and trust. The authors apply this theory to industrial districts, geographically concentrated ...
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