Small jurisdictions have become significant players in cross-border corporate and financial services. Their nature, legal status, and market roles, however, remain under-theorized. Lacking a sufficiently nuanced framework to describe their functions in cross-border finance - and the peculiar strengths of those achieving global dominance in the marketplace - it remains impossible to evaluate their impacts in a comprehensive manner.
This book advances a new conceptual framework to refine the analysis and direct it toward more productive inquiries. Bruner canvasses extant theoretical frameworks used to describe and evaluate the roles of small jurisdictions in cross-border finance. He then proposes a new concept that better captures the characteristics, competitive strategies, and market roles of those achieving global dominance in the marketplace - the "market-dominant small jurisdiction" (MDSJ). Bruner identifies the central features giving rise to such jurisdictions' competitive strengths - some reflect historical, cultural, and geographic circumstances, while others reflect development strategies pursued in light of those circumstances. Through this lens, he evaluates a range of small jurisdictions that have achieved global dominance in specialized areas of cross-border finance, including Bermuda, Dubai, Singapore, Hong Kong, Switzerland, and Delaware. Bruner further tests the MDSJ concept's explanatory power
through a broader comparative analysis, and he concludes that the MDSJs' significance will likely continue to grow - as will the need for a more effective means of theorizing their roles in cross-border finance and the global dynamics generated by their ascendance.
Industry Reviews
"Christopher Bruner's Re-Imagining Offshore Finance: Market-Dominant Small Jurisdictions in a Globalizing Financial World is a significant contribution to the literature that should become required reading for both consumers and producers of knowledge concerning the regulation of global financial transactions.... Bruner's work provides a compelling account challenging the all-too-popular scholarly view that conceptualizes small offshore jurisdictions
as parasitic entities that subsist largely at the expense of eroding the tax base of developed nations." -- William J. Moon, Michigan Law Review
"Christopher Bruner's important and timely book convincingly argues that we need to take seriously a handful of small jurisdictions that, for better and worse, have managed to compete for ever-increasing shares of the market for cross-border finance." -- Erin O'Hara O'Connor, Dean and McKenzie Professor of Law, Florida State University College of Law
"Are tax havens good or bad? Professor Bruner brings a fresh new perspective to this tantalizingly simple question in [this book]. By engaging an impressively broad scope of literatures and breaking through old, unhelpful labels, Bruner is able to identify fascinating new themes in offshore tax and financial competition. In bringing to light the concept of 'market-dominant small jurisdictions,' Bruner helps move the intellectual debate forward in a truly novel
and important way." -- Adam Rosenzweig, Vice Dean for Academic Affairs and Professor of Law, Washington University School of Law
"Re-Imagining Offshore Finance is an excellent read for anyone with an interest in international finance. It provides a thorough conceptual framework for the rise of MDSJs. Bruner's clear language and thorough analyses make a complicated theoretical analysis easy to understand ...." -- Zachary S. Freeman, NYU Journal of International Law and Politics
