Hide and Protect: A Role of Global Financial Secrecy in Shaping Domestic Institutions

Gulnaz Sharafutdinova and Michael Lokshin

No 9348, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: This paper reviews the literature that explores the drivers and effects of financial secrecy on emerging economies. It shows that most of the research on financial secrecy has been focused on issues of tax avoidance, neglecting the problems of institutional arbitrage that go beyond taxation issues. The paper discusses the limits of the institutionalist paradigm that treats businesses solely as rule-takers and calls for more attention to business agency and responsibility. Discussions about corporate social responsibility in emerging economies should incorporate thinking about the potential role that businesses, and especially big corporations, could play in promoting more effective institutions at home. Further research is needed to understand the political and institutional effects of global financial secrecy at the domestic level. The paper suggests some promising avenues for future research as well as new items to be included on the policy-making agenda in relation to financial secrecy.

Keywords: Social Policy; Common Property Resource Development; Legal Products; Regulatory Regimes; Legislation; Legal Reform; Financial Regulation&Supervision; Public Sector Economics; Taxation&Subsidies; Macro-Fiscal Policy; Public Finance Decentralization and Poverty Reduction; Economic Adjustment and Lending; Judicial System Reform; Financial Economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-08-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-law
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