Measuring Global Money Laundering: "The Walker Gravity Model"

Walker John and Unger Brigitte
Additional contact information
Walker John: University of Wollongong, Australia Utrecht University School of Economics
Unger Brigitte: University of Wollongong, Australia Utrecht University School of Economics

Review of Law & Economics, 2009, vol. 5, issue 2, 821-853

Abstract: Measuring global money laundering, the proceeds of transnational crime that are pumped through the financial system worldwide, is still in its infancy. Methods such as case studies, proxy variables, or models for measuring the shadow economy all tend to under- or overestimate money laundering. The model presented here is a gravity model which makes it possible to estimate the flows of illicit funds from and to each jurisdiction in the world and worldwide. This “Walker Model” was first developed in 1994, and used and updated recently. We show that it belongs to the group of gravity models which have recently become popular in international trade theory. Using triangulation, we demonstrate that the original Walker Model estimates are compatible with recent findings on money laundering. Once the scale of money laundering is known, its macroeconomic effects and the impact of crime prevention, regulation and law enforcement effects on money laundering and transnational crime can also be measured.

Date: 2009
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (31)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.2202/1555-5879.1418 (text/html)
For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.

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:bpj:rlecon:v:5:y:2009:i:2:n:2

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/rle/html

DOI: 10.2202/1555-5879.1418

Access Statistics for this article

Review of Law & Economics is currently edited by Francesco Parisi

More articles in Review of Law & Economics from De Gruyter
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().