Offshore financial centres: the political economy of regulation

Abstract

Offshore, Centres, Regulation, Gap, F2, G3, K40,

Organized crime, money laundering and legal economy: theory and simulations

“…Finally, in order to determine the parameter d we use an index of laxity on money laundering, as proposed by Masciandaro (2008) for several countries of the world. First of all we group all countries in the regions they belong to and then we calculate the weighted average of such index for all countries belonging to a region.…”

“…35-40. 40 In Masciandaro (2008) an Offshore Attitude Index (or laxity index) is proposed, using a two stage process. First stage: for each country it has been checked whether it was a member of both OECD and FATF (strong onshore attitude, or minimum level of offshore attitude) or it was listed in each of the three types of OFC list: the Financial Stability (FSF) list, the OECD list, the FATF list.…”

“…Second stage: it has been assigned numerical values to each level of offshore attitude: 0 if a country shows a strong onshore attitude, 1 if a country doesn't show a strong onshore attitude, but, at the same time, it wasn't in any blacklist; 2, 3 and 4 if a country was present respectively in one, two, or three blacklists. For more details see Masciandaro (2008). (2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)) the value of legal assets will be equal to:…”

Multinationals' Offshore Operations, Tax Avoidance, and Firm‐Specific Information Flows: International Evidence

“…Masciandaro () argues that a significant gap exists between the regulatory enforcement of developed countries and those of OFCs. The flexible regulations of OFCs lead some companies even to pursue “regulatory arbitrage.” In addition, anecdotal evidence suggests that OFCs have not only relatively loose regulations in place, but their regulators are also willing to follow, influence, and change regulatory requirements in response to demands from offshore firms .…”

“…Finally, we also investigate whether the flow of firm‐specific information about offshore firms is associated with prominent characteristics of offshore operations via OFCs. Using Masciandaro ()'s offshore attitude indexes ( OFCINDEX ), we expect to observe that the amount of firm‐specific information incorporated into stock price is lower for offshore firms with higher offshore indices, or equivalently, stock price is more synchronous for such firms.…”