ABSTRACT In recent decades, the global economy has generated substantial wealth associated with trade integration, financial mobility and pathbreaking technological innovations (internet, artificial intelligence, robotics and blockchains) creating a new class of millionaires, ultra-millionaires, and billionaires of different age-cohorts. The distribution of the economic gains associated to these processes, however, is far from even and […]
Read More
ABSTRACT The list of billionaires and their wealth published by Forbes magazine in the US allows computing the number of billionaires per unit of GDP and the ratio of their wealth to GDP for various countries. These measures of billionaire intensity vary greatly – sometimes by one or even two orders of magnitude. The paper […]
Read More
ABSTRACT This paper provides an analytical and empirical overview of the mobility of wealthy individuals and mobility of financial assets (offshore wealth) in a context of economic and geopolitical volatility, increased income inequality and high wealth concentration at the top. Main pulling and pushing factors and patterns of offshore wealth deposits are examined using information […]
Read More
ABSTRACT This article discusses the evolution of investment immigration in Canada and its impacts upon constructions of Canadian citizenship. Canada has led the way in providing permanent residency to foreign individuals in exchange for an investment. While investor immigration programs in Canada have gone through some changes over the years since it was first established […]
Read More
ABSTRACT That citizenship is getting lighter is not a new idea. How this is occurring and what its implications are for the fabric of communities is however a question with several facets. This article explores one of these facets. It questions how ‘new generation’ skilled migration policies, with which several states around the globe are […]
Read More
ABSTRACT What explains the growth of citizenship by investment programs and what are the implications for citizenship more broadly? This paper investigates an under-studied yet rapidly developing avenue for naturalization: jus pecuniae, or the acquisition of citizenship through financial contribution. The existing literature divides between exuberant economists touting the utility of market mechanisms to control political […]
Read More
ABSTRACT China is a major source country for immigrant investors. Hong Kong, a special administrative region of China, operates one of the most popular investment migration programmes. The Hong Kong ‘Capital Investment Entrant Scheme’ (CIES) was launched in 2003 and has granted residence rights to over 28,000 individuals, until its suspension in 2015. Notably, CIES […]
Read More
Abstract The paper explores limitations imposed on State autonomy in matters of nationality by international law and EU law and its implications for investment migration. State autonomy is in international law to a large extent unlimited, although it may not encroach upon international obligations in the area of protection of human rights. In the EU, […]
Read More
Abstract This article focuses on the consequences of the acquisition of Cypriot citizenship through Cyprus’s new Investment Programme, adopted in 2013. One of the criteria for the acquisition of citizenship is the investment of EUR two million in Cypriot banks, immovable property or companies which must be retained on Cypriot territory for at least three […]
Read More
Abstract The EU’s limited competences in the field of immigration introduce significant limits on the EU’s ability to harmonize or introduce uniform rules in the laws of nationality of its Member States. This paper will portray the EU’s competences in the field, as well as the Court of Justice’s position in the matter. It will […]
Read More