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Democracy Challenged

@democracychall.bsky.social
59 followers 29 following 78 posts

An international, interdisciplinary team based at University College Dublin, we conduct research at the intersection of corporate tax avoidance, wealth distribution, and democratic institutions. Learn more at: democracychallenged.com

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Democracy Challenged @democracychall.bsky.social · 27/04/2026
Aidan Regan: Fuel protests show you cannot do climate policy without doing class politics @businesspost.bsky.social www.businesspost.ie/analysis-opi...
businesspost.ie
Aidan Regan: Fuel protests show you cannot do climate policy without doing class politics
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Democracy Challenged @democracychall.bsky.social · 24/04/2026
In a world that rewards speed, doubt is a luxury few can afford, and exactly what we need. In this post we explore how the logic of #immediacy reshapes the way we form opinions, and why #academia should resist that pressure. The Unexpected Virtue of Doubting democracychallenged.com/2026/04/24/t...
democracychallenged.com
The Unexpected Virtue of Doubting
Understanding how individuals shape their preferences and opinions is central to understanding how habits turn into political preferences, and political preferences into votes. In our project, we s…
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Democracy Challenged @democracychall.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
China Won the Green Race While the West Priced Carbon democracychallenged.com/2026/04/22/c...
democracychallenged.com
China Won the Green Race While the West Priced Carbon
While European politicians debate whether a carbon tax is politically survivable, and American ones dismantle the Inflation Reduction Act, the decisive question of the green industrial revolution h…
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Democracy Challenged @democracychall.bsky.social · 21/04/2026
#Ireland 's #fuel protests show you cannot do #climate policy without doing class politics democracychallenged.com/2026/04/21/i...
democracychallenged.com
Ireland’s fuel protests show you cannot do climate policy without doing class politics
Half the country’s fuel supply locked behind blockades, the Defence Forces called in, and the government writing a €505 million cheque in the hope that the problem would go away. It won&#8217…
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Democracy Challenged @democracychall.bsky.social · 18/04/2026
How International Tax Cooperation Is Being Dismantled Under Trump II democracychallenged.com/2026/04/17/h...
democracychallenged.com
How International Tax Cooperation Is Being Dismantled Under Trump II
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act rewrote the rules of the game for US multinationals. When it passed in 2017, the TCJA was sold as a large-scale repatriation, a measure that would put a damper on profit s…
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Democracy Challenged @democracychall.bsky.social · 17/04/2026
Prof. Aidan Regan talks about our project and his own research in a recent episode of The Observer Effect, hosted by @shanedbergin.bsky.social open.spotify.com/episode/6tRv...
open.spotify.com
A fair society: Why Aidan Regan is focused on wealth inequality
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Democracy Challenged @democracychall.bsky.social · 17/04/2026
#Europe is financing everybody else's industrial revolution. It is time to finance our own. democracychallenged.com/2026/04/14/e...
democracychallenged.com
Europe is financing everybody else’s industrial revolution. It is time to finance our own.
The question Europe keeps asking itself is whether it can afford the green industrial revolution. It is the wrong question. The right question is why Europe is financing everybody else’s. Six…
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Democracy Challenged @democracychall.bsky.social · 16/04/2026
The Unfinished Project: #Habermas, Political #Economy, and the Defence of Democracy democracychallenged.com/2026/03/16/t...
democracychallenged.com
The Unfinished Project: Habermas, Political Economy, and the Defence of Democracy
In 2006, while studying for a masters in philosophy at the University of Amsterdam, I took a module with Prof. Ruth Sonderegger that involved a close reading of both volumes of Jürgen Habermas&#821…
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Democracy Challenged @democracychall.bsky.social · 16/04/2026
Out today: @aidanregan.bsky.social's co-authored new book: Growth, Democracy, or Climate Action? The New Trilemma of Advanced Capitalism @edinburghup.bsky.social @agendapub.bsky.social #Degrowth for workers, green growth for the rest is how you lose democratic consent for #climate action. 👇
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Democracy Challenged @democracychall.bsky.social · 16/02/2026
Who counts as middle class? And why the answer matters for democracy democracychallenged.com/2026/02/16/w...
democracychallenged.com
Who counts as middle class? And why the answer matters for democracy
The squeezed middle is real, but our measures are designed to miss it Everyone agrees the middle class is under pressure. Few agree on who the middle class actually is. And almost nobody talks abou…
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Democracy Challenged @democracychall.bsky.social · 07/01/2026
How the Fall in Corporate Tax Supercharged Wealth — and Hollowed Out Democracy democracychallenged.com/2026/01/07/h...
democracychallenged.com
How the Fall in Corporate Tax Supercharged Wealth — and Hollowed Out Democracy
One fact should sit at the centre of debates about inequality and democratic decline: corporate profits are extremely concentrated, and taxes on those profits fall overwhelmingly on the super rich.…
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Democracy Challenged @democracychall.bsky.social · 05/01/2026
Winners Take All: How Corporate Tax Cuts Weakened the Anchor of the Top 0.001% democracychallenged.com/2026/01/05/w...
democracychallenged.com
Winners Take All: How Corporate Tax Cuts Weakened the Anchor of the Top 0.001%
3.5 min read This post argues that the erosion of the corporate income tax (CIT) has quietly removed one of the main fiscal constraints on extreme wealth accumulation in the United States. As we mo…
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Democracy Challenged @democracychall.bsky.social · 17/12/2025
Ireland’s GDP Is a Mirage — Household Living Standards Tell the Real Story democracychallenged.com/2025/12/17/i...
democracychallenged.com
Ireland’s GDP Is a Mirage — Household Living Standards Tell the Real Story
Eurostat’s new figures expose the gulf between Ireland’s sky-high GDP and the ordinary consumption levels experienced by households. Every year Eurostat publishes two quietly revealing numbers. One…
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Democracy Challenged @democracychall.bsky.social · 10/12/2025
When Law Becomes Wealth: Why Political Science Must Take Accounting Seriously democracychallenged.com/2025/12/10/w...
democracychallenged.com
When Law Becomes Wealth: Why Political Science Must Take Legal-Accounting Power Seriously
Political science tends to analyse the institutions we can see — elections, tax systems, welfare states, central banks. Yet the most consequential layer of power today operates beneath public debat…
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Democracy Challenged @democracychall.bsky.social · 09/12/2025
Winner Takes All: How Corporate Tax Policy is Manufacturing Billionaire Wealth democracychallenged.com/2025/12/09/w...
democracychallenged.com
Winner Takes All: How Corporate Tax Policy is Manufacturing Billionaire Wealth
Over the last quarter-century, billionaire wealth has exploded. Global billionaire wealth has grown faster than GDP, faster than wages, and faster than median household net worth. The top 0.01% now…
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Democracy Challenged @democracychall.bsky.social · 05/12/2025
Ireland’s Profits Look Extraordinary — But It’s the Balance Sheet, Not the Real Economy, Doing the Work democracychallenged.com/2025/12/05/i...
democracychallenged.com
Ireland’s Profits Look Extraordinary — But It’s the Balance Sheet, Not the Real Economy, Doing the Work
Profit shares are supposed to tell a simple story: when a business produces something, how much of the value created ends up as profit rather than wages? It’s a basic income-distribution measure, c…
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Democracy Challenged @democracychall.bsky.social · 02/12/2025
How Corporate Tax Really Works: Allocating Income Along the Global Wealth Chain democracychallenged.com/2025/12/02/h...
democracychallenged.com
How Corporate Tax Really Works: Allocating Income Along the Global Wealth Chain
Understanding how global multijurisdictional groups (MJGs) are taxed today begins with tracing how they allocate income across their global wealth chains. These chains are the legal and organisatio…
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Democracy Challenged @democracychall.bsky.social · 17/11/2025
The MANTA-7: How Seven Tech Giants Became Bigger Than Nations democracychallenged.com/2025/11/12/t...
democracychallenged.com
The MANTA-7: How Seven Tech Giants Became Bigger Than Nations
Seven U.S. tech giants now dominate global markets like nation-states, reshaping capitalism—and democracy—in their image. Between 2014 and 2024, seven American giants—Microsoft, Apple, Nvidia, Tesl…
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Democracy Challenged @democracychall.bsky.social · 12/11/2025
The Politics of the AI Profit Mirage democracychallenged.com/2025/11/12/t...
democracychallenged.com
The Politics of the AI Profit Mirage
America’s technology giants have found a new way to make artificial intelligence look profitable: change the maths. Between 2022 and 2024, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta and Oracle each extended t…
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Democracy Challenged @democracychall.bsky.social · 07/11/2025
The Economics of War: How the Global Arms Trade Turns Conflict Into Profit democracychallenged.com/2025/11/07/t...
democracychallenged.com
The Economics of War: How the Global Arms Trade Turns Conflict Into Profit
In early 2022, as Russian tanks rolled across the Ukrainian border and Western allies scrambled to respond, stock prices in the global defense sector quietly surged. Investors anticipated what poli…
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Democracy Challenged @democracychall.bsky.social · 20/10/2025
Liberalism Collapsed Under the Weight of Its Own Contradictions democracychallenged.com/2025/10/17/l...
democracychallenged.com
Liberalism Collapsed Under the Weight of Its Own Contradictions
The post-war promise that markets would sustain democracy has collapsed into a system of concentrated wealth, eroded trust, and geopolitical fragmentation. The world is living through a rupture, no…
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SASE | The Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics @sasemeeting.bsky.social · 17/10/2025
Is the National Economy Too Small to Study? Regan and Blyth argue that Growth Model research in Comparative Political Economy is ontologically biased towards the national level.Their solution? Zoom in on the city-regional level. Full article: doi.org/10.1093/ser/mwaf003 #SER @OxfordJournals
doi.org
There is more to national economies than the national economy: extending the Growth Model research programme in comparative political economy
Abstract. This article argues that the Growth Model (GM) research programme in comparative political economy has an ontological and methodological bias tow
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Democracy Challenged @democracychall.bsky.social · 17/10/2025
The '25 #Nobel in #Economics: Innovation drives growth through creative destruction. Today, #innovation seems less about destroying the old - and more about accumulating power within the same firms. tinyurl.com/4v8hftjr
tinyurl.com
From Creative Destruction to Winner Takes All – A Commentary on the Nobel Prize and the Role of the State in Innovation
Earlier this week, Philippe Aghion, together with Joel Mokyr and Peter Howitt, won the Nobel prize in economics. In their research, the laureates show that growth results almost entirely from techn…
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Democracy Challenged @democracychall.bsky.social · 16/10/2025
Profits, Taxes and the Accumulation of Billionaire Wealth democracychallenged.com/2025/10/09/p...
democracychallenged.com
Profits, Taxes and the Accumulation of Billionaire Wealth
In 2025, Forbes counted 3,068 billionaires controlling a combined fortune of $17 trillion — more than the total output of the five largest economies in Western Europe and roughly equivale…
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Democracy Challenged @democracychall.bsky.social · 22/09/2025
Why taxing corporate profits isn’t just about revenue — it’s about counter-power. Think of it as antitrust by other means: clipping the wings of monopolies before their rents harden into dynastic wealth and political dominance. democracychallenged.com/2025/09/22/t...
democracychallenged.com
Tax as Antitrust: Why Corporate Profit Taxation Is the Real Wealth Tax
Debates about inequality often revolve around wealth taxes. The argument runs that if the top 1% hoard an ever-larger share of global wealth, then the way to fund a social state is to skim a portio…
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Democracy Challenged @democracychall.bsky.social · 12/09/2025
#Intangible #Capitalism: How Accounting Turns Licences Into Assets democracychallenged.com/2025/09/12/i...
democracychallenged.com
Intangible Capitalism: How Accounting Turns Licences Into Assets
Capitalism in the twenty-first century runs on intangibles: patents, software code, algorithms, brands. Yet what really matters is not the ideas themselves, but how they are recorded in the books. …
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Democracy Challenged @democracychall.bsky.social · 29/08/2025
The era of #tax arbitrage has narrowed. #Tariffs and rules of origin are now doing the work of industrial policy. For #Ireland, the challenge is ensuring its #pharma sector remains more than a paper hub in the eyes of both #Washington and the #OECD. democracychallenged.com/2025/08/29/w...
democracychallenged.com
Why the EU–US Trade Truce Puts Ireland’s Pharma Model at Risk
The EU–US trade truce leaves generics untouched but puts branded drugs—the core of Ireland’s export engine—at risk, with multinationals ready to shift production and tweak transfer pricing to prote…
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Democracy Challenged @democracychall.bsky.social · 28/08/2025
The age of neoliberal hands-off economics is giving way to state-led tech geopolitics. Silicon Sovereignty: Industrial Policy and the Post-Neoliberal Turn democracychallenged.com/2025/08/28/s...
democracychallenged.com
Silicon Sovereignty: Industrial Policy and the Post-Neoliberal Turn
The age of neoliberal hands-off economics is giving way to state-led tech geopolitics. For decades, neoliberal orthodoxy insisted that governments should stay out of the business of building indust…
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Democracy Challenged @democracychall.bsky.social · 24/07/2025
Corporate profits in the US are more concentrated than ever. These figures (see in the blog post) show a structural shift: competition is giving way to #oligopoly #capitalism. What does this mean for policy, #taxation, and #democracy? democracychallenged.com/2025/07/24/w...
democracychallenged.com
Winner Takes All: How the Top 1% of Firms Capture the Profits
The US corporate landscape has morphed into a winner-takes-all economy, where a handful of multinational firms control the lion’s share of profits and market power. The data is stark. Across all US…
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Digital Repository of Ireland (DRI) @dri.ie · 03/07/2025
We are delighted to share that @ucdlibrary.bsky.social have ingested a new collection into the Repository - Democracy Challenged, an @erc.europa.eu funded project led by @aidanregan.bsky.social. Find out more: dri.ie/news/new-col...
A man presenting to an audience, gesturing as he explains his topic to the engaged group of listeners.
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Democracy Challenged @democracychall.bsky.social · 04/07/2025
We are very happy that our project got added to @dri.ie. Browse our repository here: repository.dri.ie/catalog/0v83... Read the DRI's post about us: tinyurl.com/3fhs6pwv
tinyurl.com
New collection in DRI - Democracy Challenged - Digital Repository of Ireland
The Digital Repository of Ireland (DRI) is proud to announce the addition of the Democracy Challenged blog series to its ever-growing archive of socially significant collections. This collection, prod...
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Democracy Challenged @democracychall.bsky.social · 03/07/2025
The G7’s Corporate Tax Escape Hatch: Fuelling Inequality and Killing Trust in Democracy democracychallenged.com/2025/07/03/t...
democracychallenged.com
The G7’s Corporate Tax Escape Hatch: Fuelling Inequality and Killing Trust in Democracy
In June 2025 the G7 quietly unraveled one of the boldest tax reforms ever attempted. The OECD global minimum tax was designed to curb profit shifting. A single clause now exempts United States mult…
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Democracy Challenged @democracychall.bsky.social · 02/07/2025
Reminder: Today at 4pm CET (3pm Irish time) @aidanregan.bsky.social will moderate this virtual session for the 2025 @sasemeeting.bsky.social conference.
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Democracy Challenged @democracychall.bsky.social · 27/06/2025
Jeff #Bezos is throwing a $40M wedding—but the real story is how #Amazon made $3.6T (2014–2024) and paid just 9% U.S. #tax on $197B profit. IP tricks, transfer pricing, and tax laws made him rich - and let him stay that way. tinyurl.com/yw7f6xef
democracychallenged.com
Venetian Billionaire: How Amazon Built the Empire That Made Jeff Bezos one of World’s Richest Men
As the world’s richest guests descend on Venice for Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez’s lavish wedding, the scene is already drawing protest. And rightly so. Behind the €40 million party, the security …
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Democracy Challenged @democracychall.bsky.social · 17/06/2025
Tesla’s Tax Machine: How Musk’s Empire Grows While U.S. Revenues Shrink democracychallenged.com/2025/06/17/t...
democracychallenged.com
Tesla’s Tax Machine: How Musk’s Empire Grows While U.S. Revenues Shrink
Between 2014 and 2024, Tesla generated more than $34 billion in global pre-tax profit. In most jurisdictions, that would translate into a meaningful tax contribution. In Tesla’s case, it produced a…
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Democracy Challenged @democracychall.bsky.social · 13/06/2025
Recent the @economist.com piece highlights insights from @aidanregan.bsky.social on Ireland's multinational profits vs. real economic activity. Worth reading both: Economist article 👉 tinyurl.com/yv9r2wk3 Aidan’s post 👉 tinyurl.com/347b4mhw
economist.com
How Ireland became the Saudi Arabia of siphoned-off global profits
The Emerald petro-state is riding high off tech and pharma—for now
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Democracy Challenged @democracychall.bsky.social · 13/06/2025
The Billion-Dollar Battle Over IP and Tax Power democracychallenged.com/2025/06/13/t...
democracychallenged.com
The Billion-Dollar Battle Over IP and Tax Power
When a U.S. tech giant charges its Irish subsidiary a fee to use pre-existing software, that charge which is called the “buy-in payment” can shape where billions in profits end up,…
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Democracy Challenged @democracychall.bsky.social · 05/06/2025
Save the date! @aidanregan.bsky.social will moderate a round table discussion at this year's @sasemeeting.bsky.social conference. Participation is possible online.
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Democracy Challenged @democracychall.bsky.social · 30/05/2025
Repost due to typo: The pharma industry is a cornerstone of EU-US trade — and Ireland plays a key role at the heart of it. 🇪🇺🇺🇸💊🇮🇪 Vanishing Act: Strip Out Pharma and Ireland, and Over 40% of the EU’s U.S. Trade Surplus Disappears democracychallenged.com/2025/05/29/v... #Trade #Pharma #Ireland
democracychallenged.com
Vanishing Act: Strip Out Pharma and Ireland, and Over 40% of the EU’s U.S. Trade Surplus Disappears
The transatlantic trade relationship is often framed in terms of a stark imbalance: in 2024, the European Union ran a €198.2 billion goods trade surplus with the United States. On the surface, this…
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Democracy Challenged @democracychall.bsky.social · 26/05/2025
We’ve written a lot about intangible assets in our case studies. Time to step back and ask: what makes intangibles special - and how are they reshaping modern capitalism? A Primer on Intangible Capital - What’s There to Know? @linusze.bsky.social democracychallenged.com/2025/05/26/a...
democracychallenged.com
A Primer on Intangible Capital – What’s There to Know?
with Aidan Regan In recent weeks, we’ve repeatedly discussed intangible assets and their role in the complex tax strategies of multijurisdictional corporate groups (MJGs). Intangibles were central …
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Democracy Challenged @democracychall.bsky.social · 19/05/2025
The Mirage of Substance: The Legal Scaffolding Behind Ireland’s Corporate Tax Boom democracychallenged.com/2025/05/19/t...
democracychallenged.com
The Mirage of Substance: The Legal Scaffolding Behind Ireland’s Corporate Tax Boom
Since the closure of the Double Irish scheme in 2015, nearly $1 trillion in IP-related assets have been shifted into the Irish subsidiaries of US multinationals. This transfer has driven an extraor…
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Democracy Challenged @democracychall.bsky.social · 15/05/2025
Ireland’s Phantom Prosperity: The GDP Mirage and the Real Economy democracychallenged.com/2025/05/14/i...
democracychallenged.com
Ireland’s Phantom Prosperity: The GDP Mirage and the Real Economy
Ireland’s economic success story is, on the surface, dazzling. The country’s GDP — the broadest measure of economic activity — reached €510 billion in 2023, making it one of the richest countries i…
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Democracy Challenged @democracychall.bsky.social · 13/05/2025
From Brave New World to #Apple vs. #Brussels: How Media Fragmentation Shapes Our Reality New blog post by Oscar Barrera-Rodríguez, Lakshmi Menon and @aidanregan.bsky.social. They unpack the reactions sparked by last year’s landmark #tax ruling. democracychallenged.com/2025/05/13/f...
democracychallenged.com
From Brave New World to Apple vs. Brussels: How Media Fragmentation Shapes Our Reality
with Lakshmi Menon and Aidan Regan What happens when one tax ruling sparks six national narratives? From Orwell’s censorship to Huxley’s information overload, Apple’s €13B showdow…
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Democracy Challenged @democracychall.bsky.social · 13/05/2025
Check out the article our team's Oscar Barrera-Rodríguez recently published in the European Journal of Political Economy. "Capital vs. labour: The effect of income sources on attitudes toward the top 1 percent" www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... #EJPE #politicaleconomy #inequality
sciencedirect.com
Capital vs. labour: The effect of income sources on attitudes toward the top 1 percent
We conduct a randomized online survey to study how information on the share of top earners' income derived from capital and labour affects attitudes t…
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Democracy Challenged @democracychall.bsky.social · 11/05/2025
New article by @aidanregan.bsky.social in @businesspost.bsky.social examining Ireland's tax model and the pivotal role of intellectual property in its increasingly precarious economic strategy. www.businesspost.ie/analysis-opi...
businesspost.ie
Aidan Regan: The ground is shifting on Ireland’s economic model – it’s time we woke up to the risks
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Democracy Challenged @democracychall.bsky.social · 06/05/2025
We’re thrilled that the @businesspost.bsky.social has published a major investigation based on findings from our @erc.europa.eu-funded project at @ucddublin.bsky.social. It shines a spotlight on how multinationals shift profits through Ireland. A thread👇 democracychallenged.com/2025/05/06/o...
democracychallenged.com
Our ERC Research Featured in The Business Post
We’re thrilled to share that The Business Post has published a detailed investigative report drawing on findings from our European Research Council-funded project at University College Dublin. The …
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Democracy Challenged @democracychall.bsky.social · 04/05/2025
Our analysis in cooperation with the @businesspost.bsky.social is now available online and in print.
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Democracy Challenged @democracychall.bsky.social · 25/04/2025
One #IntellectualProperty Asset, Two Balance Sheets: How #VMware Engineered Profits into Losses democracychallenged.com/2025/04/25/o...
democracychallenged.com
One IP, Two Balance Sheets: How VMware Engineered Profits into Losses
In 2019, VMware International Unlimited Company (VMIUC) looked like a textbook Irish subsidiary of a successful U.S. tech multinational. Based in Cork and then owned by Dell Technologies, it record…
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Reposted by Democracy Challenged
herman mark schwartz @thunen.bsky.social · 22/04/2025
Interested in tax avoidance (by firms, not how-to-do-it 😑) and the connection to the franchise economy? uva.theopenscholar.com/files/docume... The democracy challenged project blog democracychallenged.com/blog/ Is now releasing punchy company by company analyses. @democracychall.bsky.social
democracychallenged.com
Blog
Visit the post for more.
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Democracy Challenged @democracychall.bsky.social · 24/04/2025
From 2014 to 2024, #AbbVie reported $115.7 billion in foreign profits while booking $37.6 billion in U.S. losses. The result? An average foreign effective #tax rate of just 2.9%. democracychallenged.com/2025/04/24/h...
democracychallenged.com
How AbbVie shifted profits offshore and lowered its tax bill through Ireland
Over the past decade, AbbVie Inc. has reported strong global earnings. But the distribution of those profits, and where they were taxed, tells a different story. From 2014 to 2024, AbbVie recorded …
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