房地产行业洗钱行为分析及监测

洗钱活动逐渐从金融机构向其他领域蔓延,房地产行业已成为洗钱的高发地。对比房地产行业洗钱的两大主体——腐败的公职人员和以民营企业家为代表的非公职人员的洗钱行为,结果表明:腐败的公职人员注重安全效用,常常通过能在短时间内利用他人名义的房地产交易活动洗钱,具有较强的隐蔽性;非公职人员则注重收益最大化,主要通过将非法资金注入企业经营,虚假报账,具有较强的欺骗性。     

Detecting money laundering using filtering techniques: a multiple‐criteria index

Money laundering is a dynamic activity attempting to circumvent anti‐money laundering (AML) actions. We propose a money‐laundering detection approach encompassing three separate detection measures applied simultaneously, providing a consolidated index to minimize circumvention. The index incorporates three detection measures: (1) deviations in trading volume and frequency; (2) unusual payments to or receipts from an atypical trade partner; and (3) Benford’s Law, based on the number of times a specific digit occurs in a particular position in numbers to detect financial fraud. Finally, we design a numerical test that any reasonable detection approach should satisfy. Our results successfully discover possible fraud planted in the simulated data.     

Gravity models of trade-based money laundering

Several attempts have been made in the literature to measure money laundering. However, the adequacy of these models is difficult to assess, as money laundering takes place secretly and, hence, goes unobserved. An exception is Trade-Based Money Laundering (TBML), a special form of trade abuse that has been discovered only recently. TBML refers to criminal proceeds that are transferred around the world using fake invoices that under- or overvalue imports and exports. This article is a first test on the well-known prototype models proposed by Walker and Unger to predict illicit money laundering flows and to apply traditional gravity models familiar in international trade theory. To do so, we use a dataset of Zdanowicz of TBML flows from the US to 199 countries. Our test rejects the specifications of the Walker and Unger prototype models, at least for TBML. The traditional gravity model that we present can explain TBML flows worldwide in a plausible manner. An important determinant is trade in which TBML is hidden. Furthermore, our results suggest that criminals use TBML in order to escape the stricter anti-money laundering regulations of financial markets.     

对我国《反洗钱法》构建的几点建议

洗钱犯罪的日趋猖獗使得世界各个国家和地区纷纷通过立法等各种措施对其加以控制和打击。虽然我国的反洗钱法律体系正在不断的成熟和完善,但缺乏一部独立的《反洗钱法》,这给我国的反洗钱工作带来了极大的不便。因此,应根据我国的实际情况,尽快提出我国《反洗钱法》的构建措施,以此作为完善我国反洗钱立法的选择和切入点。     

洗钱和资本外逃的经济制度原因分析与对策研究

本文系地研究了改革开放以来,伴随着中国企业实施"走出去"战略而出现的对外投资的"异化"问题———洗钱和资本外逃问题产生的原始动机、经济制度原因和遏制外逃的对策建议。     

基于贝叶斯分类的可疑金融交易识别研究

国内外反洗钱工作的大量实践表明,金融交易活动是洗钱犯罪行为的一个重要环节,通过分析金融机构的客户信息和交易数据,采用科学的方法识别可疑金融交易进而发现洗钱线索,已成为反洗钱研究的核心工作.文章将数据挖掘方法与金融领域知识相结合,首先通过对金融交易信息的多层次分析,总结出不同信息层次上的可疑金融交易特征;其次针对不同层次的交易信息,选择合适的数据挖掘方法,并结合客户背景资料,识别出可疑金融交易记录;最后依据贝叶斯判定原理,综合各层次的可疑信息,得到交易记录的整体可疑度,最终为反洗钱监测提供快速准确的参考.实验结果证明该方法是可行和有效的.     

电子货币洗钱行为的经济学解释

具有匿名性、即时性和跨国界性等特征的电子货币将有利于洗钱,并给反洗钱造成潜在的威胁,但是迄今为止还未发现利用电子货币进行洗钱的实例.根据洗钱者的成本收益比较分析,作出了一个合理的解释,并用博弈论对电子货币反洗钱策略进行了研究.     

反洗钱国际合作与犯罪资产分享问题研究

洗钱犯罪具有诸多上游犯罪,腐败犯罪是其中之一。腐败犯罪,特别是跨国腐败犯罪,日益演化成为跨国洗钱犯罪。犯罪行为人利用国际金融快速便捷的汇兑工具,实施转移腐败赃款的活动。通过跨国洗钱活动,可以使犯罪分子获取大量的现金,并进而从事经营活动,聚敛更多的非法财产,获取更多的经济资源,从而为进一步实施腐败活动提供经济支持。为此,国际社会给予高度重视,在腐败资产追回和预防腐败资产转移目标下,探讨反洗钱国际合作,以及犯罪资产分享等理论和实践问题,为腐败资产追回和预防腐败资产转移探索国际合作途径,提高反腐败国际合作成效提供方法上的参考。我国为研究实施《联合国反腐败公约》,投入较大的精力,成立了国家预防腐败局,并广泛开展反腐败国际合作,推动实施《联合国反腐败公约》的步伐。本文就围绕以上问题,从反腐败国际合作实践角度,运用实证思考方法加以研究,以期为反腐败调查、追回腐败资产、开展反洗钱合作提供总结与建议性思想材料。     

Does Disclosure Reduce Pollution? Evidence from India’s Green Rating Project

Public disclosure programs that collect and disseminate information about firms’ environmental performance are increasingly popular in both developed and developing countries. Yet little is known about whether they actually improve environmental performance, particularly in the latter setting. We use detailed plant-level survey data to evaluate the impact of India’s Green Rating Project (GRP) on the environmental performance of the country’s largest pulp and paper plants. We find that the GRP drove significant reductions in pollution loadings among dirty plants but not among cleaner ones. This result comports with statistical and anecdotal evaluations of similar disclosure programs. We also find that plants located in wealthier communities were more responsive to GRP ratings, as were single-plant firms.     

Does Saying ‘Yes’ to Capital Inflows Necessarily Mean Good Business? the Effect of Antimoney Laundering Regulations in the Latin American and the Caribbean Economies

This study explores the level of compliance and the subsequent economic performance of states in the context of anti‐money laundering (AML) regulations. Following Holmstrom and Tirole (1997) and Obstfeld and Rogoff (1998), we examine why countries admit illicit flows of money and the economic costs of these transactions. Analyzing 36 Latin American and Caribbean jurisdictions between 1960 and 2010, we find that poor institutional performance by a jurisdiction (AML ratings, blacklists with non‐cooperator countries, and corruption indicators) affects negatively the investment ratio to GDP, the FDI ratio to GDP, and financial development (ratio of credit markets to GDP). These findings are novel in the literature, offering an important contribution to the debate on financial regulatory convergence.     

Spillovers from regulating corporate campaign contributions

Populist clamor and recent Supreme Court decisions have renewed calls for increased regulation of corporate money in politics. Few empirical estimates exist, however, on the implications of existing rules on firms’ political spending. Exploiting within firm-cycle cross-candidate variation and across firm-cycle variation, we demonstrate that the regulation of PAC campaign contributions generates large spillovers into other corporate political expenditures such as lobbying. Using both high dimensional fixed effects and regression discontinuity designs, we demonstrate that firms constrained by campaign contribution limits spend between $549,000 and $1.6M more on lobbying per election cycle, an amount that is more than 100 times the campaign contribution limit. These results demonstrate that, similar to regulations in other domains of the economy, constraining specific corporate political activities often yields unintended effects.     

Optimal trade policy in tariff games with inside money

We construct a bilateral trade model incorporating two physical goods and a financial asset (inside money) to discuss the optimal trade policy that countries would choose to maximize their respective utilities. In this Nash tariff game, the trade of physical commodities only occurs geographically across countries, and the trade of inside money allows for intertemporal allocation of consumptions. When the preferences, present and future endowments for each country are given, according to our numerical analysis, trade surplus or deficit (inside money) and optimal tariff rates are endogenously determined when general equilibrium conditions hold. One country may purchase inside money to shift current consumption to the future, and the other may be willing to issue inside money for smoothing its consumptions in two periods. This imbalance trade contradicts traditional trade models which imply a balanced trade policy. We further find that the price of inside money as an implied interest rate also is determined by the trade intervention policies.     

Long-Run Links among Money, Prices and Output: Worldwide Evidence

Abstract. Starting from the quantity theory of money we analyse the dynamic relationships between money, real output and prices for an unbalanced panel of 110 economies. Complementary to trivariate analyses we also adopt a P-star model explaining inflation via an equilibrium price level (P-star), which in turn depends on potential output and money. A key issue of the paper is the cross-sectional stability of estimation and inference results. We find cointegration among the considered variables. Particularly for high inflation countries homogeneity between prices and money cannot be rejected. Given homogeneity we find evidence for an error-correction mechanism linking current price changes and the lagged price gap. Parameter estimates indicating the adjustment towards the price equilibrium are larger in absolute value for high inflation countries. The latter results indicate that central banks, even in high inflation countries, can improve price stability by controlling monetary growth.     

Agricultural and monetary shocks before the great depression: A graph-theoretic causal investigation

This paper uses graph-theoretic methods to investigate the causal relationships between agriculture, money, interest rates, prices, and real GDP in 12 countries during the years 1869–1929. We find that agricultural production directly and indirectly causes real GDP in two-thirds of the cases. Monetary shocks also play an important causal role in about half the cases, but unlike agriculture, the causal links are usually indirect through other variables to real GDP. The direct causal link between money and prices is also particularly strong. Between 1869 and 1929, money causes prices in nearly all of the countries in the sample.     

关于我国反洗钱工作中存在问题的研究

在我国，洗钱犯罪活动日益严重并呈现上升趋势。然而，我国的反洗钱工作进行的并不是十分顺利，仍存在诸多的问题。本文在分析我国反洗钱工作中存在的主要问题的基础上，提出了一些相关的对策建议。     

The (in)stability of money demand in the euro area: lessons from a cross-country analysis

The instability of standard money demand functions has undermined the role of monetary aggregates for monetary policy analysis in the euro area. This paper uses country-specific monetary aggregates to shed more light on the economics behind the instability of euro area money demand. Our results obtained from panel estimation indicate that the observed instability of standard money demand functions could be explained by omitted variables like e.g. technological progress that are important for money demand but constant across member countries.     

The effects of national culture on corporate social responsibility disclosure: a cross-country comparison

This article presents a cross-country analysis of the influence of national culture on corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure. We analyse the relationship between the Hofstede’s cultural dimensions and the sustainability disclosure with the GDP per capita (GDPPC) of 44 countries, using panel data with information based on the Global Reporting Initiative guidelines. The governance effectiveness and the foreign direct investment are also included in the analysis. The results show that in countries with higher GDPPC, the CSR disclosure is negatively related to individualism and masculinity and positively related to uncertainty avoidance and indulgence. When focusing in countries with lower GDPPC, the results suggest that CSR disclosure is negatively related to power distance and positively related to uncertainty avoidance. Moreover, five of the six Hofstede’s cultural dimensions negatively affect sustainability disclosure in countries with middle GDPPC.     

Is ‘no news’ really ‘good news’? Country visibility and FDI location choice

In choosing where to invest, firms seek out information on a set of possible locations. Information asymmetries may make country visibility particularly important in decisions to locate investment abroad. We develop a country visibility index based on international news stories in The Economist, and show that broad country visibility is at least as important in attracting foreign direct investment (FDI) as other specific investment promotion activities or proxies for information frictions. Controlling for standard gravity model determinants of FDI, we find that greater visibility of developing countries, in particular lower middle- and low-income countries, increases the investment that they receive from US multinational corporations.     

Domestic and International Sources of Inflation in Developing Countries: Some Evidence from the Monetary Approach

Using the monetary approach, this paper examines empirically the causes of inflation in twenty-five developing countries. In addition to money supply, the underlying money demand function and foreign exchange rates are taken into account in the inflationary process. The lag structures are determined by Akaike's FPE criterion and the exogeneity assumptions are assessed by Granger-type causality tests. The results suggest that the monetary approach provides adequate explanation of inflation across all countries examined. Besides changes in expected inflation and foreign exchange rates, movements in base money in these countries have significantly contributed to their inflationary pressures. [134, 431]     

What is behind low wages in central and eastern Europe?

This paper compares wages across Europe in relation to the characteristics of workers and firms, with a particular focus on wage levels in central and eastern European countries. Worker and workplace endowments can be taken as a proxy for labour productivity. We estimate the extent to which wage differences observed at an aggregate level can be related to the different compositions of workforces and workplaces, as well as the types of jobs conducted in separate countries. We also decompose the observed differences in returns on endowments by identifying the sectors and occupational categories that contribute most to the wage gaps observed at the aggregate level. The wage gaps in low-wage countries actually appear larger once differences in worker, work and workplace characteristics are controlled for. In contrast, the differences in wages between high-wage countries diminish when we control for these endowments. The wage gap between East and West thus seems to be explained by a much lower return on skills and other characteristics rather than by differences in the composition of workforces and firms. Sectoral and occupational analysis suggests that central and eastern European countries have developed a generalised low-cost and low-wage model, with relative returns particularly low on higher skills. There is much less wage disparity across European countries in more labour intensive and lower-paid services sectors, such as accommodation and food service activities. The magnitude of the wage gap seems to be driven by the relative position of sectors and occupations in high-wage countries.