Dr Andrea Binder (2014) wins Körber Foundation's German Dissertation Award 2020
The prize honors excellent PhD research with a high relevance for society. The annual competition is held under the auspices of Bundestag President Wolfgang Schäuble.
Andrea's PhD thesis titled, The politics of the invisible: offshore finance and state power (Supervisors: Helen Thompson and Jason Sharman), analyses the relationship between offshore finance and state power. Offshore financial services are used by wealthy individuals and corporations to access credit not available onshore, to minimise tax bills, to avoid government regulations and to obscure legally and illegally made fortunes. Seen from offshore, the shape of the contemporary international economy appears quite different from the conventional view. Some of its most fundamental elements appear bigger - for instance the amount of US dollar created offshore - or smaller - for instance the volume of foreign direct investment - than official statistics suggest. That is, important elements of the offshore economy remain invisible to researchers and the general public alike. The thesis employs Geoffry Ingham's notion of credit-money and compares the (ab)uses of offshore financial services in Britain, Germany, Mexico and Brazil based on a mixed-methods approach, combining banking statistics with elite interviews and historical analyses. The thesis demonstrates that offshore financial services are a central part of the international economy. Across all cases offshore money creation in the Eurodollar markets is more consequential for the power of the state than is offshore tax planning. Yet, the nature of the effect varies from country to country. It depends on the historically grown domestic elite bargain over how to finance the state.
The award will be presented at an event in December 2020.
You can follow Andrea on Twitter at @abinder1.
About the Körber-Stiftung German Dissertation Award
Every year, Körber-Stiftung presents the German Dissertation Award to the best of young German researchers. We award prizes totalling more than €100,000 for significant and innovative research, including three top prizes à €25,000. This makes the German Dissertation Award one of the most highly endowed prizes awarded to young scientists in the country. The competition is held under the auspices of Bundestag President Wolfgang Schäuble. In addition to academic excellence, the German Dissertation Award particularly focuses on the broader social relevance of a particular piece of research. As such, the award encourages young scientists to underscore the value of their research to society and to discuss their work in public.
Huge congratulations to Andrea!