Blog
Overcoming the challenge of illicit financial flows: Four pieces of advice for policymakers
From profit shifting to sanction evasion, illicit financial flows divert funds away from essential poverty-fighting and infrastructure programs. A...
Blog
From billions to trillions – can the international financing for development system deliver this?
by
Betty N. Wainaina
August 2024
It is surreal, sitting on this side of history. Many who were involved in shaping the 2030 global development agenda recall the intense process and...
Working Paper
Illicit financial flows and the Global South
Illicit financial flows (IFFs) constitute a major challenge for development in the Global South, as domestic resource mobilization is imperative for providing crucial public services. While several methods offer to measure the extent of IFFs, each...
Working Paper
Legal opacity, narcotics laws, and drug seizures
We show that legal opacity is a strong factor in drug trafficking. We develop a new framework that illustrates how legal opacity influences countries’ seizure rates. Legal opacity reduces the detection of illicit flows and increases their volumes...
Working Paper
Measuring illicit financial flows
Illicit financial flows have recently attracted the attention of academia, practitioners, and multilateral organizations who consider them harmful to economic development. Some observers suggest that many of these flows occur via the misinvoicing of...
Journal Article
Illicit financial flows and developing countries
Illicit financial flows (IFFs) constitute a major challenge for development in low-income countries, as domestic resource mobilization is imperative for providing crucial public services. This study focuses exclusively on the economic dimension of...
Working Paper
The state and the ‘legalization’ of illicit financial flows
Most research on illicit financial flows (IFFs) has focused on illicit outflows from developing countries and the role of non-state actors in generating IFFs. Less attention has been paid to processes and interfaces through which IFFs enter formal...
Blog
Global tax reforms, net-zero, and domestic revenue: Food for thought from the DRM programme
by
Abrams M.E. Tagem
December 2022
Domestic revenue mobilization (DRM) and taxation have gained prominence lately on the global agenda, most recently with the resolution for the United...
Working Paper
Illicit financial flows and country-by-country reporting in extractive industries
Economic data are important in governing the international political economy. Some of the most widely used macro statistics risk being undermined by systematic misalignment in reporting of economic activity due to illicit financial flows, as well as...
Blog
New global estimates on profits in tax havens suggest the tax loss continues to rise
by
Ludvig Wier, Gabriel Zucman
December 2022
The world has been trying to curb profit shifting to tax havens for a decade, but consistent time series evaluating the impact of these reforms have...
Blog
From Monterrey to Addis Ababa, and what has happened since?
The importance of domestic revenue mobilization and taxation for sustainable development is widely acknowledged in global development discussions, but...
Blog
$1 trillion in the shade: The annual profits multinational corporations shift to tax havens continues to climb and climb
by
Ludvig Wier, Gabriel Zucman
March 2023
About a decade ago, the world’s biggest economies agreed to crack down on multinational corporations’ abusive use of tax havens. This resulted in a 15...
Impact
UNU-WIDER research cited in major UN DESA and EU Tax Observatory reports
The 2023 Financing for Sustainable Development report and Global Tax Evasion Report 2024 include findings from UNU-WIDER research on illicit financial flows, structural transformation, and international monetary system. The 2024 Financing for Sustainable Development report highlights UNU-WIDER's Government Revenue Dataset (GRD) as a prominent source for revenue statistics.
Workshop
Workshop on illicit financial flows
UNU-WIDER together with the Development Economics Research Group at the University of Copenhagen (UCPH-DERG) organizes an in-person workshop on illicit financial flows (IFFs) at the University of Copenhagen on 25-26 October 2022.
Tue, 25 October 2022
–
Wed, 26 October 2022
University of Copenhagen,
Øster Farimagsgade 5,
Copenhagen,
Denmark
Past event
Presentation
Elisa Casi-Eberhard on mandatory disclosure regimes
World Bank's hybrid conference on global tax equity is organized on 22-23 September 2022. Elisa Casi-Eberhard, a Norwegian School of Economics Assistant Professor, gives a presentation on a WIDER Working Paper at the conference. The topic of Casi...
Thu, 22 September 2022
–
Fri, 23 September 2022
Hybrid,
United States
Past event
Presentation
Research on illicit financial flows presented at the Early Researchers Consortium in Accounting
The Accounting Research Groups at the UPF Barcelona School of Management (Spain), Free University of Bolzano (Italy) and University of Padua (Italy) organise the fifth edition of the Accounting Summer Camp in Barcelona on July 13-15 2022. Researcher...
Wed, 13 July 2022
–
Thu, 14 July 2022
UPF-BSM,
Barcelona,
Spain
Past event
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