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In June 2024, economist Gabriel Zucman presented a blueprint for a coordinated minimum taxation standard for ultra-wealthy individuals, requiring billionaires to pay annually an amount equivalent to 2% of their net wealth in tax. The underlying principle was that ultra-wealthy individuals whose effective tax burden fell short of this minimum would face an additional tax liability to bridge the gap.

Drawing on my recent research on wealth taxation, available here, this blog post discusses why, almost three years after Zucman first introduced this proposal, we do not seem to be moving any closer towards a consensus on how the ultra-wealthy should be taxed.

Every October 18, the EU marks its Anti-Trafficking Day to raise awareness of human trafficking and its impact on victims and societies. To acknowledge this day, this blog post is the result of a collaboration between two authors.

There are a handful of digital oligarchs that capture and rule every successive wave of innovation – from the digital markets to generative AI, from agentic AI to (potentially also) quantum computing. Taking the example of generative AI, and the position of strength enjoyed by these digital gatekeepers across the generative AI value chain, this blog post, based on my latest work (available here), discerns why competition, contestability and fairness concerns also qualify as digital sovereignty concerns along the digital stack.

The question is whether the current legal framework in the EU remedy at least some of these competition and sovereignty concerns?

This month marks the 30^th anniversary of Pokémon. A highly popular Japanese franchise consisting of animated series and films, computer games, and trading card games. Many people are fascinated by Pokémon and over the years, Pokémon also caught my attention. Not because I am a fan of the series or because I collect the cards, but because Pokémon have interesting connections to criminal behaviour. Below I share some fascinating criminological insights and address the question whether Pokémon might be criminogenic.

For more than seventy-five years, one rule has governed the Road Runner cartoons: Wile E. Coyote orders some ingenious contraption from ACME, activates it, and watches it turn against him. The rocket skates overshoot. The catapult fires the wrong way. The anvil obeys gravity with suspicious selectivity. Road Runner vanishes into the distance. The Coyote hangs in mid-air, realises what is about to happen, and falls. Then he gets up and starts again. In Dave Green’s Coyote vs Acme, however, he changes weapons. This time, he hires a lawyer.