IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/crm/wpaper/2403.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Unintended Consequences of Money-Laundering Regulations

Author

Listed:
  • Fabrizio Colella

    (USI University)

  • Keith Maskus

    (University of Colorado at Boulder)

  • Alessandro Peri

    (University of Colorado at Boulder)

Abstract

Tighter money-laundering regulations in offshore financial havens may inadvertently spur incentives to launder money domestically. Our study exploits regulations targeting financially based money laundering in Caribbean jurisdictions to uncover the creation of front companies in the United States. We find that counties exposed via offshore financial links to these jurisdictions experienced an increase in business activities after the tightening of anti-money-laundering regulations. The effect is more pronounced among small firms, in sectors at high risk of money laundering, and in regions with high intensities of drug trafficking. Our work provides the first empirical evidence of the real effects of policy-induced money-laundering leakage.

Suggested Citation

  • Fabrizio Colella & Keith Maskus & Alessandro Peri, 2024. "Unintended Consequences of Money-Laundering Regulations," RF Berlin - CReAM Discussion Paper Series 2403, Rockwool Foundation Berlin (RF Berlin) - Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration (CReAM).
    • Handle: RePEc:crm:wpaper:2403
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cream-migration.org/publ_uploads/24003.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jean Tirole, 1988. "The Theory of Industrial Organization," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262200716, April.
    2. James O’Donovan & Hannes F Wagner & Stefan Zeume, 2019. "The Value of Offshore Secrets: Evidence from the Panama Papers," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 32(11), pages 4117-4155.
    3. Alstadsæter, Annette & Johannesen, Niels & Zucman, Gabriel, 2018. "Who owns the wealth in tax havens? Macro evidence and implications for global inequality," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 162(C), pages 89-100.
    4. Senay Agca & Pablo Slutzky & Stefan Zeume, 2021. "Anti-Money Laundering Enforcement, Banks, and the Real Economy," Working Papers 2021-20, The George Washington University, Institute for International Economic Policy.
    5. Kimball, Miles S, 1995. "The Quantitative Analytics of the Basic Neomonetarist Model," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 27(4), pages 1241-1277, November.
    6. Caplin, Andrew & Nalebuff, Barry, 1991. "Aggregation and Imperfect Competition: On the Existence of Equilibrium," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 59(1), pages 25-59, January.
    7. Anderson, Simon P & de Palma, Andre & Nesterov, Yurii, 1995. "Oligopolistic Competition and the Optimal Provision of Products," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 63(6), pages 1281-1301, November.
    8. Swati Dhingra & John Morrow, 2019. "Monopolistic Competition and Optimum Product Diversity under Firm Heterogeneity," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 127(1), pages 196-232.
    9. Donato Masciandaro, 1999. "Money Laundering: the Economics of Regulation," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 7(3), pages 225-240, May.
    10. Edwin M. Truman & Peter Reuter, 2004. "Chasing Dirty Money: The Fight Against Anti-Money Laundering," Peterson Institute Press: All Books, Peterson Institute for International Economics, number 381, April.
    11. Tomas Williams & Pablo Slutzky & Mauricio Villamizar-Villegas, 2019. "Drug Money and Bank Lending: The Unintended Consequences of Anti-Money Laundering Policies," Working Papers 2019-5, The George Washington University, Institute for International Economic Policy, revised May 2020.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Parenti, Mathieu & Ushchev, Philip & Thisse, Jacques-François, 2017. "Toward a theory of monopolistic competition," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 167(C), pages 86-115.
    2. Keith E. Maskus & Alessandro Peri & Anna Rubinchik, 2021. "Hiding Filthy Lucre in Plain Sight: Theory and Identification of Business-Based Money Laundering," CESifo Working Paper Series 9019, CESifo.
    3. Matsuyama, Kiminori, 2020. "When Does Procompetitive Entry Imply Excessive Entry?," CEPR Discussion Papers 14991, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    4. Menkhoff, Lukas & Miethe, Jakob, 2019. "Tax evasion in new disguise? Examining tax havens' international bank deposits," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 176, pages 53-78.
    5. Tomas Williams & Pablo Slutzky & Mauricio Villamizar-Villegas, 2019. "Drug Money and Bank Lending: The Unintended Consequences of Anti-Money Laundering Policies," Working Papers 2019-5, The George Washington University, Institute for International Economic Policy, revised May 2020.
    6. Shon M. Ferguson, 2015. "Endogenous Product Differentiation, Market Size and Prices," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 23(1), pages 45-61, February.
    7. Simon P. Anderson & Regis Renault, 1999. "Pricing, Product Diversity, and Search Costs: A Bertrand-Chamberlin-Diamond Model," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 30(4), pages 719-735, Winter.
    8. Melo, Emerson, 2014. "Price competition, free entry, and welfare in congested markets," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 53-72.
    9. Zhou, Jidong, 2021. "Mixed bundling in oligopoly markets," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 194(C).
    10. Rhodes, Andrew & Zhou, Jidong, 2022. "Personalized Pricing and Competition," MPRA Paper 112988, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. Renato Soeiro & Alberto A. Pinto, 2023. "Negative network effects and asymmetric pure price equilibria," Portuguese Economic Journal, Springer;Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestao, vol. 22(1), pages 99-124, January.
    12. Anderson, Simon P. & de Palma, Andre, 1999. "Reverse discrete choice models," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(6), pages 745-764, November.
    13. Barigozzi, Francesca & Ma, Ching-to Albert, 2018. "Product differentiation with multiple qualities," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 380-412.
    14. Anderson, Simon P. & de Palma, Andre, 2000. "From local to global competition," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 44(3), pages 423-448, March.
    15. Federico Etro, 2018. "Macroeconomics with Endogenous Markups and Optimal Taxation," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 85(2), pages 378-406, October.
    16. Simon P Anderson & André de Palma, 2020. "Decoupling the CES Distribution Circle with Quality and Beyond: Equilibrium Distributions and the CES-Logit Nexus," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 130(628), pages 911-936.
    17. Anderson, Simon P. & Renault, Regis, 2003. "Efficiency and surplus bounds in Cournot competition," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 113(2), pages 253-264, December.
    18. David Prentice & Xiangkang Yin, 2000. "Measuring Quality-Adjusted Inflation Rates for a Heterogeneous Oligopoly," Working Papers 2000.06, School of Economics, La Trobe University.
    19. Yallwe, Hagos Alem & Buscemi, Antonino, 2011. "Money laundry and financial development," MPRA Paper 32219, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Laurent Reynald-Alexandre, 2007. "Probalilistic duopoly with differentiation by attributes," Working Papers halshs-00587847, HAL.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Money laundering; money-laundering leakage; business establishments; offshore leaks; regulatory reforms; monopolistic competition;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F30 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - General
    • K40 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - General
    • G28 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Government Policy and Regulation
    • H00 - Public Economics - - General - - - General
    • D58 - Microeconomics - - General Equilibrium and Disequilibrium - - - Computable and Other Applied General Equilibrium Models

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:crm:wpaper:2403. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CReAM Administrator or Matthew Nibloe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cmucluk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.