A look offshore: unpacking the routes of misinvoicing in international trade

Catalin Dragomirescu-Gaina and Leandro Elia

No wp-2022-156, WIDER Working Paper Series from World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER)

Abstract: 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 results are driven by less-developed countries, autocracies, and resource-rich countries, which typically lack institutional capacity and/or political willingness to deter capital flight and misinvoicing practices.

Keywords: Misinvoicing; Banking; Offshore financial centres; Natural resources; International trade; Rent-seeking; Elites; Capital flight (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ban, nep-ifn and nep-int
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.wider.unu.edu/sites/default/files/Publ ... ernational-trade.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp-2022-156

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in WIDER Working Paper Series from World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Siméon Rapin ().