Financial Transparency Coalition

Illicit financial inflows and illicit financial outflows must be added together in order to accurately measure the adverse impact of these flows on developing economies, explains Dr. Dev Kar.

Global Financial Integrity Lead Economist Dev Kar examines the role of illicit financial flows (IFFs) in the Greek debt crisis. IFFs cost Greece an estimated US$160 billion over the last decade.

Greece has been in the news a lot lately and as we all know, it has not been good news. By all accounts, the austerity measures being imposed on the population as a condition...

A recent study at Global Financial Integrity (GFI) found that illicit financial flows from developing countries (henceforth emerging markets), which grew around 18 percent per annum since 2002 swelled up to US$1 trillion in 2006. While the lack of prudent macroeconomic policies, political instability, and governance issues are major drivers of illicit flows, a subsequent study at GFI found that banking secrecy and lack of regulatory oversight facilitated the absorption of illicit flows in mainly Western financial institutions. Curtailing illicit flows must therefore involve both emerging market as well as developed countries to address the factors...

Most countries in the world are somewhere in-between a bipolar policy extreme characterized by either complete monetary dominance or complete fiscal dominance. Complete monetary dominance (equivalently zero fiscal dominance) is characterized by complete independence of the monetary authority. Under such a situation, any increase in debt (generated by the central bank selling government bonds in the open market) must be followed by increases in the current or future primary surplus (i.e., excess of the current government revenues from all taxes over current government expenditures) by the fiscal authority such that it is able to back the principal and interest...