While extortion may sound exotic and in the hands of a few economic and/or political godfathers, it is instead quite a common phenomenon that affects many people around the world. Taking by threatening while pretending to give something in return appears to be a crucial dimension of contemporary societies. This project seeks to move the gaze from conventional criminal political domains (i.e. powerful strongmen and business oligarchs) and crime statistics to these everyday economies of unrefusable offers. In the process, we show how intimidation is distributed across society. We do so by setting up extortion as an object of anthropological inquiry. The program of work consequently consists of three main components: 1) Primary research on 'offers that cannot be refused' across different domains of life in twenty settings across South and East Asia, the Americas, Africa and Europe; 2) Analytical and theoretical development in the study of exchange, consent, coercion, economic violence and lawfare; 3) Methodological innovation by conducting collaborative cross-national ethnographic research and adding a South-to-South comparative angle in an area dominated by single case studies and a focus on the Global North. Research is embedded in anthropology but informed by empirical and analytical questions relevant to criminology, political science, economics and development studies.