Professional action in global wealth chains

Abstract

This article provides a framework for explaining professional action in multi-jurisdictional tax and finance environments, focusing on how relationships between clients, professionals, and regulators shape market structures. Given the complexity of tax and financial regulations within and across national systems, professionals experienced in accounting, financial, legal, and policy systems have opportunities to engage to increase information asymmetries rather than lower them. This article draws on the recent literature on Global Wealth Chains to theorize how professionals develop action profiles to exploit opportunity structures through information gaps. We develop a theoretical framework for understanding how professionals may intentionally, and as a matter of strategy, exploit information gaps in different socio-economic contexts. We provide case vignettes of client-professional-regulator relationships in multi-jurisdictional tax and finance management, highlighting how professional action shapes wealth chains and attempts at regulatory intervention. Our theoretical contribution is to link micro-level interactions to macro-level structures of wealth creation and protection in the transnational economic and legal order.