Financial Transparency Coalition

Good news for the economists and statistics wonks among us: the World Bank has recently made its substantial catalogue of data available on the web for free at http://data.worldbank.org! We applaud the Bank for taking this important step! The site and the data are available in four languages: Arabic, English, French and Spanish. Open access to this data is invaluable for researchers and interested members of the public who want to better understand global trends on a host of...

A statement released by Mars Group Kenya, a Kenyan anti-corruption organization, this past week clearly shows an awareness and distaste for the role played by international financial organizations in financing corrupt regimes, as well as an appreciation for recent U.S. action to pressure Kenyan politicians to push for government reform. Pressure from the U.S. came last week in the form of 15 letters from the U.S. government to top Kenyan officials, “warning them of possible travel bans if they did not cooperate in instituting reforms.” While many government officials have come out decisively against the actions...

Illicit financial flows exit developing countries through two broad channels—as unrecorded capital flows from a country’s external accounts (captured by the World Bank Residual model) and trade mispricing (captured by the Direction of Trade statistics or DOTS model). GFI’s study Illicit Financial Flows from Developing Countries: 2002-2006 points out that some researchers have questioned the use of the trade mispricing model to capture illicit flows. They argue that data issues underlying the recording of partner country exports and imports introduce enough “noise” so that the trade mispricing model is unable to capture illicit flows. I was therefore...

A side event at the World Bank/IMF Meetings in Istanbul