Category Archives: Monopoly & Finance

San Francisco, New York, Washington: Iron Triangle of Rent

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Note: an earlier version of this post appeared in November 2019. Since then, the problem of monopoly – particularly, the platform giants we could call Big Tech: Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Facebook etc – has grown as a matter of public concern, with the US House of Representatives Subcommittee on Antitrust issuing a report calling for major reforms. Also, the research paper on which the blog post is based has now been published: Maryann Feldman, Frederick Guy, and Simona Iammarino. 2020. “Regional Income Disparities, Monopoly and Finance.” Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society rsaa024 (December). You can click through to that or, for the condensed, non-technical version, read on!

The map below shows where the higher paid jobs in the USA were concentrated in 2016; green is for greenbacks.

top20incwage_2016

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Transparency in Extractive Industry Deals?

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A deal among EU states, apparently overcoming strong opposition from the oil industry.

This is very good news for two reasons.

It’s no secret that proceeds from the sale of oil, timber, etc, often wind up in the pockets (and offshore bank accounts) of public officials around the world. It would be hard to add up the damage this does Continue reading →

Cyprus and re-regulation

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The Tax Justice Network dishes dirt on what the “financial services” industry of Cyprus was selling. So will the EU really close this business down in Cyprus? And will it roll on from that to the many other tax havens (or what the TJN people call “secrecy jurisdictions”) either in the EU or under the protection of various EU states? It could, in the end, go that way.

We can hope that this is a step on the road to bringing the financial sector under control. Continue reading →