According to conventional wisdom, capital flows are fickle. Focusing on emerging markets, this paper asks whether this conventional wisdom still holds in the contemporary world. The results show that, despite recent structural and regulatory changes, much of it survives. FDI inflows are more...

In this paper we analyze the influence of direct democratic institutions on the size and development of the shadow economies. The framework developed predicts a negative relationship between the degree of direct democracy and the size of the shadow economy. Countries where direct democratic...

This paper assesses the relationship between institutions, output, and productivity, when official output is corrected for the size of the shadow economy. Our results confirm the usual positive impact of institutional quality on official output and total factor productivity, and its negative...

The analysis of economic loss attributed to the shadow economy has attracted much attention in recent years by both academics and policy makers. Often, multiple indicators multiple causes (MIMIC) models are applied to time series data estimating the size and development of the shadow economy for...

Central bank independence (CBI) is a very important precondition for price stability. However, the empirical evidence for a correlation between both is relatively weak. In this paper, this weakness is countered with a) an extended measure of monetary commitment, which includes well-known...

This paper is the first to analyse the three-way relationship among money laundering, anti-money-laundering efforts and corruption. On the one hand, if we assume that the goal of criminals involved in corruption is to minimize the probability of being detected, then corruption represents a...

This paper considers the determinants of exports of modern services and traditional services. It considers the growth of export volumes as well as export surges, that is, the periods of rapid sustained export growth. It asks whether the determinants of export growth rates and export surges...

Using the multiple indicator-multiple cause (MIMIC) approach, this paper generates a novel global database by estimating the size of the shadow economy for 157 countries over 1991 to 2017. The results suggest that the OECD countries are by far the lowest with values below 20% of off official GDP...

We ask whether epidemic exposure leads to a shift in financial technology usage within and across countries and if so who participates in this shift. We exploit a dataset combining Gallup World Polls and Global Findex surveys for some 250,000 individuals in 140 countries, merging them with...