Accident or design? : the role of the state in Jersey's development as an offshore finance centre

• Main Author: Hampton, Mark
• Format: Book Part
• Language: English
• Published: Institute of Island Studies, University of Prince Edward Island 1998
• Subjects: Investments; Foreign; Foreign > Jersey; Banks and banking > Jersey; Jersey > Politics and government; Jersey > Economic policy; States; Small > Economic conditions; North Atlantic
• Online Access: https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar//handle/123456789/39317

The island of Jersey has been an Offshore Finance Centre (OFC) for over thirty years and is in competition with many other island OFCs, both in the North Atlantic area and globally. Conventional wisdom, or the "official" version of how Jersey became a successful OFC, gives the impression that the island's government - the States of Jersey - set out to deliberately create an international OFC in the early 1960s. This paper examines the role of the statel in Jersey's development as an OFC and asks whether the OFC was the result of Jersey's strategic economic policy or was due to other factors. In other words, did Jersey's success as an OFC happen by accident or by design? peer-reviewed