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Profit & Power. Arbitrage in the Era of the Multinational Corporation by Ronen Palan

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Home > Blog > Profit & Power. Arbitrage in the Era of the Multinational Corporation by Ronen Palan

Link : Profit & Power. Arbitrage in the Era of the Multinational Corporation, Cambridge University Press, Ronen Palan, 31. Jan 2026

Why are Multinational Corporations so powerful and elites so wealthy while still operating within nation-state rules? Profit and Power examines how firms engage in legal transgression, operating at the edges of legality to maximize profits. Offering a practical analysis of jurisdictional arbitrage, Ronen Palan exposes the hidden mechanisms behind corporate power in globalization and reveals how the rule-based transgressor elite emerged through strategic use of MNC structures. Tracing the origins to the late nineteenth century, Palan focuses on centrally-coordinated multi-corporate enterprises (CCMCEs) – networks of legally independent yet interconnected firms. He explores the gap between the legal entity and the corporate group, a loophole long exploited to arbitrage national regulations, including taxation. This is the first systematic study of jurisdictional arbitrage and its impact on states and society. By analysing corporate decision-making within fragmented regulatory environments, it unveils the systemic role of legal ambiguity in shaping modern capitalism and corporate dominance.

 

Book Description

Explores how MNCs use arbitrage to legally strengthen their position, minimizing obligations and maximizing wealth, power, and influence. Arbitrage is one of the most powerful techniques Multinational Corporations use to increase their value, fueling the rise of a rule-based transgressor elite. Demonstrating how arbitrage is a form of power, this book simplifies complex legal and accounting techniques, making them accessible to audiences seeking to understand MNCs’ global strategies.

 

Review

“Palan’s deeply revisionist analysis of the multinational firm shows how they use jurisdictional arbitrage to legally evade taxation and regulation in pursuit of power in the distributional struggle among firms and between firms and states. It’s essential for understanding how the global economy actually works.” Herman Mark Schwartz, University of Virginia

“Palan’s insights about contemporary capitalism are more profound than those of any other author I know. ‘Profit and Power’ strips away what we think we know about value, the corporation and globalization before revealing how the alchemy of corporate arbitrage situates us in a very different economy than we imagine.” J. C. Sharman, University of Cambridge

‘Ronen Palan’s new book argues that today’s most successful firms are centrally coordinated multi-corporate enterprises that earn their profits from intangible assets and jurisdictional arbitrage, exploiting cross-border differences in government policies and regulations. The book explores corporate strategies that exploit these legal gray areas and their broader implications for wealth, power and capitalism.’ Lorraine Eden, Adjunct Professor of Law and Professor Emerita of Management, Texas A & M University

“This is a pathbreaking book in International Relations. Everyone in the field will want to understand Palan’s breakthrough concept of jurisdictional arbitrage and its role in the global economy. Everyone in International Political Economy will want to read the book closely and take its argument into account.” Craig N. Murphy, Past-President of the International Studies Association and recipient of its Distinguished Scholar Awards in International Organization and International Political Economy

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Cambridge University Press
• Publication date ‏ : ‎ 31 Jan. 2026
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 270 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1009605283
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1009605281
• Item weight ‏ : ‎ 250 g

About the author

Professor Ronen Palan (BSc. Econ, LSE, PhD LSE) joined City University London in September 2012. Prior to this he has been a professor of IPE at the University of Birmingham and Sussex University, and a lecturer in International Relations at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. He was a founding editor of the Review of International Political Economy (RIPE) and member of the Fellow and Promotion Committee at the Institute of Development Studies, Brighton. Professor's Palan's work lies at the intersection between international relations, political economy, political theory, sociology and human geography. He wrote a number of books and numerous articles, book chapters and encyclopaedia entries on the subject of Offshore and Tax havens, state theory and international political economic theory. His work has been translated to Chinese, simple and complex characters, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, French, Russian, Italian, Azeri and Czech. He is a visiting professor at several Universities including the Central European University-Budapest, Hebrew University-Jerusalem, York University-Toronto, CERIS-ULB Diplomatic  School of Brussels and Centre pour la Recherche Economique et ses applications-CEPREMAP-Paris. [read more]