The atlas of contemporary capitalism is curious indeed. A desperately poor and civil-war-wracked nation, Liberia, is the world's shipping superpower; the Cayman Islands the fifth-largest financial centre in the world; land-locked Zurich a venerable "offshore" banking centre. Indeed, it is estimated that half of the global stock of money passes through tax havens. The logic of the offshore world, where millionaires and corporations roam in search of financial advantage, is slippery. It challenges many conventional assumptions about power and economics. In this comprehensive account of the offshore economy, Ronen Palan investigates the legal spaces, unregulated and yet maintained and supported by the state system, that have emerged for purposes of international finance, tax havens, export processing zones, flags of convenience and e-commerce. The offshore economy had its beginnings in the late 19th century, saw early development after World War I, and metastasized in the 1970s. Palan believes that a rapidly expanding offshore economy is now producing a new market in sovereignty; states have discovered that their rights to write law may be used as a commercial asset. This commercialization of sovereignty, he asserts, undermines the legitimacy of the nation-state and supports a form of nomadic capitalism. INDICE The offshore economy in its contemporary settings State, capital, and the production of offshore The emergence of embryonic forms of offshore The growth of an offshore economy Offshore and the internationalization of the state Offshore and the demise of the nation-state.