Suchergebnisse

Cover -- Global Shell Games -- Series -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Figures -- Tables -- Preface -- 1 Introduction -- The notorious Lu Zhang -- Compliance, experiments, and transnational relations -- The shell game experiment -- Locus of behavior: firm compliance and the challenge of heterogeneity -- Transnational relations -- Field experiments -- Plan of the book -- 2 Explaining the global shell game -- Shell companies -- Corporate service providers and the shell company industry -- The global corporate transparency standards -- Experimental design -- Coding responses -- Conclusion -- 3 Overall compliance, tax havens, OECD and developing countries -- Overall results -- Comparing aggregate results with expectations -- Compliance by country type: the rich, the poor, and the havens -- The results: confounding the conventional wisdom -- Explaining the results -- Conclusion -- 4 Terrorism and corruption -- Explaining the Terrorism treatment -- Terrorism findings -- Explaining the Corruption treatment -- Corruption findings -- Explaining the Premium treatment -- Findings for the Premium condition -- Conclusion -- 5 Laws and standards -- Private authority, non-state actors, and transnational relations -- Knowledge, rules, and compliance -- Explaining the FATF treatment -- FATF findings -- ACAMS treatment -- ACAMS findings -- IRS treatment -- IRS findings -- Conclusion -- 6 Penalties, norms, and US origin -- Penalties treatment -- Penalties results -- Norms treatment -- Norms results -- US Origin treatment -- US Origin results -- Conclusion -- 7 Conclusion -- What have we learned about shell companies? -- Experiments as a solution to scholarly and policy problems -- Experimental transnational relations -- Appendices Chapter 2 Appendix: Explaining the global shell game -- General background.

"Fourteen experts from US, Latin America, Europe, and Africa provide considerable information and realistic evaluations of inter-American environmental policy in terms of sustainable development. Assess impact of Latin American democratization, free trade, multilateral development banks, and non-governmental organizations. Also compare problems in southern Africa and former USSR"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 57

Using two field experiments, we probe the efficacy of international rules mandating that incorporation services establish their customers' true identities. The standards were designed to prevent anonymous 'shell' corporations central to money laundering, corruption, and other crimes. Posing as consultants seeking confidential incorporation, we randomly assigned six experimental conditions in emails varying information about monetary reward, international and domestic law, and customer risk to 1,793 incorporation services in 177 countries and 1,722 U.S. firms. Firms in tax havens obey the rules significantly more often than in OECD countries, whereas services in poor nations sometimes prove more compliant than those in rich countries. Only the risk of terrorism and specter of the Internal Revenue Service decrease offers for anonymous incorporation, but they also lower compliance. Offers to 'pay a premium' reduce compliance. The risk of corruption decreases response rates but, alarmingly, also decreases compliance rates. Raising international law has no significant effect. Adapted from the source document.

AbstractEfforts to fight international money laundering, corruption, and terrorist financing depend crucially on the prohibition barring the formation of anonymous shell companies. To study the effectiveness of this prohibition, we perform the first international relations (IR) field experiment on a global scale. With university institutional review board (IRB) clearance, we posed as consultants requesting confidential incorporation from 1,264 firms in 182 countries. Testing arguments drawn from IR theory, we probe the treatment effects of specifying (1) the international standards (managerialism), (2) penalties for noncompliance with these standards (rationalism), (3) the desire to follow norms through complying with international standards (constructivism), and (4) status as a U.S. customer. We find that firms prompted about possible legal penalties for violating standards (rationalism) were significantly less likely to respond to inquiries and less likely to comply with international law compared to the placebo condition. Some evidence also suggests that the constructivist condition caused significantly greater rates of noncompliance. The U.S. origin condition and the managerial condition had no significant effects on compliance rates. These results present anomalies for leading theories and underscore the importance of determining causal effects in IR research.

AbstractAre banks sensitive to risk and reward in following global corporate transparency rules? Using a worldwide field experiment, this study evaluates competing predictions from expected utility, behavioralist, and institutionalist accounts. We incorporated a dozen companies around the world to make over 15,000 email solicitations asking for corporate accounts from 5000 of the world's internationally connected banks. Treatments randomize the risk profiles of different companies—by their countries' association with corruption, terrorism, and tax evasion—and vary rewards by stating differing amounts of business revenues. The outcomes are the rates at which banks offer accounts and comply with rules on customer identification. The results suggest that banks are moderately responsive to risk—though not reward—but the magnitude of the effects is small, providing mixed evidence for conventional models and suggestive support for institutionalist accounts.

AbstractThrough a field experiment and audit study, we test how the electoral calendar affects the use of local economic development policies. We explore how electoral timing along with local political institutions and party composition affect local governments' offers of investment incentives to outside firms. We legally incorporated a consultancy and, on behalf of a real investor in manufacturing, approached roughly 3,000 U.S. municipalities with inquiries. The main experimental results show no greater tendency to offer incentives for investment anticipated prior to than after elections—a null result that is estimated with high precision. Limiting the sample to municipalities that specialize in manufacturing, the relevant subgroup, suggests that election timing matters in this most likely set of locales. Some observational findings include additional evidence on how direct elections of executives and partisanship correlate with incentive offers.

AbstractTo promote good governance, citizens can inform governments directly and routinely about the implementation of policies and the delivery of public services. Yet citizens lack incentives to provide information when they do not expect governments to be responsive, and citizen disengagement in turn often prevents governments from providing public goods effectively. In two field experiments, we studied potential remedies to this dilemma related to solid waste services in Uganda. We randomly assigned reporters to be recruited by community nomination and to be recognized by community leaders in an attempt to select for and motivate information sharing. We also randomly assigned reporters to hear from the government about how their reports were used to make real improvements to waste services. Community nominations and public announcements did not increase reporting. However, responsiveness boosted participation over several months for reporters who had been recruited earliest and had been reporting longest, highlighting the critical role of timely government responsiveness in sustaining information flows from citizens.