Our new website is live! 🎉 A platform dedicated to exploring the link between wealth concentration and the cracks in democracy. Great work on wealth inequality, profit shifting via intellectual property, and the challenges facing democracy is coming soon!. Excited to share! 🌍.

Hiring part-time RA!.Join our UCD/WID project on profit & wealth concentration and corporate tax in the US. Skills: scraping SEC 10-Ks, data analysis (R/Stata/Python), interest in inequality & governance. Deadline: Aug 15.Apply: CV + 300 words → aidan.regan@ucd.ie.

Tesla’s tax machine at work. 💸 Transfer pricing + profit shifting = tax savings → free cash flow → buybacks → Musk’s wealth → political influence. It’s not just tax planning, it’s power concentration. Full blog 👇.

How Ireland became the Saudi Arabia of siphoned-off global profits. The economics referring to our work project @Aidan_Regan @democracychall.bsky.social. ". profits booked in Ireland far exceeds the substance of local operations".

📝Don't miss our new post. Strip Out Pharma and Ireland, and Over 40% of the EU’s U.S. Trade Surplus Disappears by professor @Aidan_Regan . ➡️ The same capital makes a full circle, inflating exports and GDP, distorting what trade stats really mean.

Calamaro, uno menos.

GDP vs. GNI. Economists often promote GDP/c as a reliable measure of social welfare -but. On this entry @Aidan_Regan reveals a serious flaw in IE: GDP inflates true economic prosperity by counting billions that never benefit local workers or businesses.

[7/7] Indeed, too much fragmented information can harm democracy just as much as censorship. How can we ensure critical thinking and resilience?. Explore our full blog-analysis here 👉

[6/7] Huxley’s vision mirrors better probably today’s reality. Fragmented media coverage divides audiences, shapes opposing opinions, and weakens democratic debate, exactly as he feared.

[5/7] @Aidan_Regan, Lakshmi Menon and I analyzed media coverage of the recent Apple vs. European Commission case across 6 countries, using AI-driven sentiment analysis. The same news was portrayed radically differently between continental Europe and the Anglo-American sphere.

[4/7] The ruling sparked intense reactions and coverage across media globally. Yet, depending on the country, news framed this decision very differently, ranging from celebration to anger and skepticism. This fragmentation matters deeply for democracy.

[3/7] In September 2024, the European Court ruled Apple must pay ~€13 billion in back taxes to Ireland. The reason? . The EU said Ireland gave Apple unfair tax benefits, violating fair competition rules. Apple denied wrongdoing, claiming full compliance with Irish laws.

[2/7] Meanwhile, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World envisioned a different dystopia:. one where people drown in endless, superficial information, numbing critical thought through distractions and entertainment.

Lets unpack how 2 classic dystopian novels foresaw our media reality through 7 posts. [1/7] In the 20th century, two novels predicted dystopian futures. Orwell’s 1984 warned us about censorship, surveillance, and a world ruled by "Big Brother," where truth and freedom vanish.

Want to dig deeper?. We measure how voters respond when exposed to the real income sources of the 1%, using a survey experiment and a justice-framing task inspired by Amartya Sen’s flute experiment. Get access to the full paper:

New paper out =). Echo chambers, confirmed. Most of the top 1%'s income comes from capital, not labour @WIL_inequality . When people learn this, attitudes towards the rich shift, especially among left-wing voters with egalitarian views.

RT @Aidan_Regan: 🧵1/ . We’re thrilled that the @businessposthq has published a major investigation based on findings from our @ERC_Researc….

RT @businessposthq: Ireland’s Tax Mirage: Business Post investigation exposes how vulnerable Ireland is

2/2:.In the graph below, we show how American companies from the knowledge-based sector have systematically increased their share of intangibles, particularly since 2015. It highlights how intangible assets have become a key factor in shaping corporate wealth.

1/2:.Our Blog Post by @Aidan_Regan:.Explores how multinational companies leverage intangible assets to strategically shift profits and minimize their tax obligations. 👉 We believe that this is the rule rather than the exception. .

🚗💰 How does Tesla's tax strategy fuel Musk's influence?. In their latest piece, @Aidan_Regan & Rafael Quintero dive into how tax optimization helped Musk build his war chest, one that now extends into European politics. 🔍