Financial sanctions, which aim to economically hurt a target by restricting its access to financial assets and markets, require the ability to identify who owns an asset. Although experts have long claimed that offshore financial centres that offer secrecy ('tax havens') undermine sanctions by...

We show that the incorporation of offshore entities increases when oil and gas exploration licences are awarded. We exploit leaked data on the incorporation of shell companies and detailed information on tax havens and the awarding rounds of oil licences to construct a new data set covering 119...

Financial sanctions, which aim to economically hurt a target by restricting its access to financial assets and markets, require the ability to identify who owns an asset. Although experts have long claimed that offshore financial centres that offer secrecy ('tax havens') undermine sanctions by...

The Dark Web has changed the way drugs are traded globally by shifting trade away from the streets and onto the web. In this paper, I study whether the Dark Web has an impact on street crime, a common side effect of traditional drug trade. To identify a causal effect, I use daily data from the...

This paper investigates the link between financial crises in developing countries and the variation of bank deposits in offshore financial centers. Using both a two-way fixed effects and a stacked difference-in-differences estimator, we find that after three years since the beginning of the...

I document mafia firms’ participation in public procurement contracts awarded following natural disasters in Italy. I exploit quasi-random assignment of municipalities to emergency relief status after earthquakes. I show that, only after emergency status is released, criminal firms increase...