The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission seeks to regulate non-U.S. domiciled financial firms when U.S. investors' interests are affected. In 2010, in Morrison v. National Australia Bank, the U.S. Supreme Court narrowed the circumstances when extraterritorial regulation is appropriate....

For individual taxpayers engaged in offshore tax evasion, the U.S. government has issued a clarion call of deterrence best summarized in the song made famous by Martha and the Vandellas: “Nowhere to run to; nowhere to hide.” Yet, the jury is still out — literally — for most bankers,...

We develop and test hypotheses derived from a multi-level theoretical framework for understanding factors shaping the credit risk and capital structure of a quintessentially Asian form of investment known as project finance. It differs from other corporate financing approaches. A project company...

We study whether misinvoicing in international trade is reflected in cross-border bank accounts as reported by offshore financial centres. We show that residents hold more offshore wealth when local misinvoicing practices thrive, especially for under-invoiced exports of natural resources. These...

The problem of measuring changes in corruption internationally is significantly more daunting than that of estimating their levels. We compute trends in corruption for groups of geographically proximate countries, based on the geographic distribution of cases of cross-border bribes, and confirm...

A global comparative study that measures impunity levels across fifty-nine countries, with a focus on how structure and functioning of systems of security and justice and human rights violations fosters impunity

Taken the Global Impunity Index (IGI 2015) results as a starting point, this work measures impunity at the subnational level in Mexico. Understanding impunity as a multidimensional process that fosters violence, insecurity and corruption, the study measures variation in seventeen indicators for...

A number of popular notions and outright myths on governance and corruption are addressed in this chapter. We distinguish clearly between governance and anti-corruption, while probing the links between both notions. In so doing we challenge the conventional definition of corruption as being too...

Traditionally, national governance and corruption challenges have been seen as: i) particularly daunting in the poorer countries, with the richer world viewed as exemplary; ii) anchored within a legalistic framework and focused on formal institutions, iii) a challenge within public sectors, and,...

Over the past years, several countries around the world have adopted a system of prudential prompt corrective action (PCA). The European Union countries are being encouraged to adopt PCA by policy analysts who explicitly call for its adoption. To date, most of the discussion on PCA has focused...