New Perspectives on Offshore Finance

On 26–27 March 2026, scholars gathered at Sciences Po CERI for the two-day workshop “Advances in Studying the Offshore World” on offshore finance and its political economy.

Co-organized by Ricardo Soares de Oliveira (Sciences Po–CERI / CNRS) and Andrea Binder (Freie Universität Berlin), the workshop brought together an international group of researchers working across political science, economic history, and financial geography.

Across five panels, discussions focused on the historical evolution, institutional foundations, and political dynamics of offshore finance. Contributions ranged from analyses of shell company infrastructures and correspondent banking networks to questions of capital flight, tax haven sovereignty, and the role of offshore finance in global inequality. Presentations addressed, among other topics, the social organization of offshore wealth and elite networks (Brooke Harrington), the political economy of tax havens (Ronen Palan), and the role of financial professionals and intermediaries in offshore systems (Kimberley Kay Hoang). Further contributions engaged with questions of global financial governance and regulation, including work by Jason Sharman and Dariusz Wójcik.

The discussions also highlighted emerging approaches to studying offshore systems. In her presentation, Andrea Binder proposed an analytical framework for examining obscurity in offshore finance, contributing to a broader discussion on how to conceptualize and make sense of hidden financial structures.

Overall, the workshop underscored the growing momentum of offshore finance as an interdisciplinary field and pointed to both the resilience of offshore systems and the need for new conceptual and empirical tools to better understand their role in shaping contemporary political and economic orders.

Photo: Thorsten Benner