This publication identifies the main areas of weakness and potential areas for action to combat money-laundering, tax evasion, foreign bribery, and to identify, freeze and return stolen assets.

This publication identifies the main areas of weakness and potential areas for action to combat money-laundering, tax evasion, foreign bribery, and to identify, freeze and return stolen assets. It also looks at the role of development agencies and finds that the potential returns to developing countries from using ODA on issues like combating tax evasion or asset recovery are significant. Finally, it identifies some opportunities for a scaled-up role for development agencies.

Why are carefully designed, sensible policies too often not adopted or implemented? When they are, why do they often fail to generate development outcomes such as security, growth, and equity? And why do some bad policies endure? World Development Report 2017: Governance and the Law addresses these fundamental questions, which are at the heart of development. Policy making and policy implementation do not occur in a vacuum. Rather, they take place in complex political and social settings, in which individuals and groups with unequal power interact within changing rules as they pursue conflicting interests. The process of these interactions is what this Report calls governance, and the space in which these interactions take place, the policy arena. The capacity of actors to commit and their willingness to cooperate and coordinate to achieve socially desirable goals are what matter for effectiveness. However, who bargains, who is excluded, and what barriers block entry to the policy arena determine the selection and implementation of policies and, consequently, their impact on development outcomes. Exclusion, capture, and clientelism are manifestations of power asymmetries that lead to failures to achieve security, growth, and equity. The distribution of power in society is partly determined by history. Yet, there is room for positive change. This Report reveals that governance can mitigate, even overcome, power asymmetries to bring about more effective policy interventions that achieve sustainable improvements in security, growth, and equity. This happens by shifting the incentives of those with power, reshaping their preferences in favor of good outcomes, and taking into account the interests of previously excluded participants. These changes can come about through bargains among elites and greater citizen engagement, as well as by international actors supporting rules that strengthen coalitions for reform.

This year’s edition of the Policy Coherence for Development (PCD) publication focuses on illicit financial flows and their detrimental effects on development and growth.

This report is a first step towards building a qualitative understanding of the way illicit or criminal activities interact with the economy, security and development of West African States.

This edition of Better Policies for Development focuses on illicit financial flows and their detrimental effects on development and growth. Every year, huge sums of money are transferred out of developing countries illegally. The numbers are disputed, but illicit financial flows are often cited as outstripping official development aid and inward investment. These flows strip resources from developing countries that could be used to finance much-needed public services, such as health care and education. This report defines policy coherence for development as a global tool for creating enabling environments for development in a post-2015 context. It shows that coherent policies in OECD countries in areas such as tax evasion, anti-bribery and money laundering can contribute to reducing illicit financial flows from developing countries. It also provides an update on OECD efforts to develop a monitoring matrix for policy coherence for development, based upon existing OEC

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Illicit financial flows constitute a global phenomenon of massive but uncertain scale, which erodes government revenues and drives corruption in countries rich and poor. In 2015, the countries of the world committed to a target to reduce illicit flows, as part of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. But five years later, there is still no agreement on how that target should be monitored or how it will be achieved. Illicit financial flows occur through many different channels, whether they involve laundering the proceeds of crime or shifting profits of multinational companies. These deliberately hidden cross-border movements of assets and income streams depend on a set of common tools including opaque company accounts, legal vehicles for anonymous ownership, and the secrecy jurisdictions that provide these series. The overall effect is to reduce the revenue available to states and to weaken the quality of governance - leading to less money to support human development, and a lower likelihood of funds being well spent. Estimating Illicit Financial Flows: A Critical Guide to the Data, Methodologies, and Findings is authored by two of the economists most closely involved in the process to develop UN indicators of illicit financial flows. In it, they offer a critical survey of the existing data and methodologies, identifying the most promising avenues for future improvement and setting out their own proposals. They cover a range of corrupt practices aimed at obtaining immunity or impunity from criminal law, from market regulation, and from taxation.

A growing concern among those interested in economic development is the realization that hundreds of billions of dollars are illicitly flowing out of developing countries to tax havens and other financial centers in the developed world. This volume assesses the dynamics of these flows, much of which is from corruption and tax evasion.

This report assesses the magnitude, flows and drivers of illicit trade and the illegal economy including: narcotics, human trafficking, wildlife, sports betting, counterfeit medicines, alcohol and tobacco. The negative socio-economic impacts that these markets have in consumer countries are as worrisome as the goverance gaps that are exploited in source countries. This report examines each illicit sector in terms of the geographic sources, destinations and key trade routes, the current trend of infiltration by organized crime networks, and good practices or future policy solutions with which to combat illicit trade within the various sectors.