IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bdi/opques/qef_445_18.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Magic mirror in my hand�. how trade mirror statistics can help us detect illegal financial flows

Author

Listed:
  • Mario Gara

    (Banca d�Italia)

  • Michele Giammatteo

    (Banca d�Italia)

  • Enrico Tosti

    (Banca d�Italia)

Abstract

Criminals worldwide typically use misreporting tricks of different sorts to exploit the transfer of goods between different countries for money laundering purposes. The main international anti-money laundering organisations started paying attention to this phenomenon, known as trade-based money laundering, or TBML, a long time ago, but the absence of suitable analytical tools has reportedly impeded preventive action. Nonetheless, the literature has consistently shown that the analysis of discrepancies in mirrored bilateral trade data could provide some help. Based on previous studies, this work builds a model factoring in the main structural determinants of discrepancies between mirrored data concerning Italy�s external trade in the period 2010-13, considered at a highly detailed (6-digit) level of goods classification for each partner country. Point estimates of freight costs are used to net the cif-fob discrepancy. The regression estimates are then used to compute TBML risk indicators at country and at (4-digit) product level. Based on these indicators, rankings of countries and product lines can be compiled and used to detect potential illegal commercial transactions.

Suggested Citation

  • Mario Gara & Michele Giammatteo & Enrico Tosti, 2018. "Magic mirror in my hand�. how trade mirror statistics can help us detect illegal financial flows," Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) 445, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    • Handle: RePEc:bdi:opques:qef_445_18
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.bancaditalia.it/pubblicazioni/qef/2018-0445/QEF_445_18.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Helge Berger & Volker Nitsch, 2008. "Gotcha! A Profile of Smuggling in International Trade," DEGIT Conference Papers c013_026, DEGIT, Dynamics, Economic Growth, and International Trade.
    2. Federico, Giovanni & Tena, Antonio, 1991. "On the accuracy of foreign trade statistics (1909-1935): Morgenstern revisited," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 259-273, July.
    3. Yeats, Alexander J, 1990. "On the Accuracy of Economic Observations: Do Sub-Saharan Trade Statistics Mean Anything?," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 4(2), pages 135-156, May.
    4. Nitsch, Volker, 2011. "Trade Mispricing and Illicit Flows," Publications of Darmstadt Technical University, Institute for Business Studies (BWL) 54540, Darmstadt Technical University, Department of Business Administration, Economics and Law, Institute for Business Studies (BWL).
    5. Shintaro Hamanaka, 2012. "Whose trade statistics are correct? Multiple mirror comparison techniques: a test case of Cambodia," Journal of Economic Policy Reform, Taylor and Francis Journals, vol. 15(1), pages 33-56.
    6. Jagdish Bhagwati, 1981. "Alternative theories of illegal trade : Economic consequences and statistical detection," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 117(3), pages 409-427, September.
    7. Raymond Fisman & Shang-Jin Wei, 2009. "The Smuggling of Art, and the Art of Smuggling: Uncovering the Illicit Trade in Cultural Property and Antiques," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 1(3), pages 82-96, July.
    8. Shintaro Hamanaka, 2012. "Whose trade statistics are correct? Multiple mirror comparison techniques: a test case of Cambodia," Journal of Economic Policy Reform, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(1), pages 33-56, March.
    9. Storti, Cláudia Costa & De Grauwe, Paul (ed.), 2012. "Illicit Trade and the Global Economy," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262016559, December.
    10. Céline Carrère & Christopher Grigoriou, 2014. "Can Mirror Data Help To Capture Informal International Trade?," UNCTAD Blue Series Papers 65, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.
    11. Nitsch, Volker, 2016. "Trillion dollar estimate: Illicit financial flows from developing countries," Darmstadt Discussion Papers in Economics 227, Darmstadt University of Technology, Department of Law and Economics.
    12. Yalta, A. Yasemin & Demir, Ishak, 2010. "The Extent of Trade Mis-Invoicing in Turkey: Did Post-1990 Policies Matter?," MPRA Paper 30186, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Sophia Rabe-Hesketh & Anders Skrondal, 2012. "Multilevel and Longitudinal Modeling Using Stata, 3rd Edition," Stata Press books, StataCorp LP, edition 3, number mimus2, March.
    14. Joras Ferwerda & Mark Kattenberg & Han-Hsin Chang & Brigitte Unger & Loek Groot & Jacob A. Bikker, 2013. "Gravity models of trade-based money laundering," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 45(22), pages 3170-3182, August.
    15. Pitt, Mark M., 1981. "Smuggling and price disparity," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 11(4), pages 447-458, November.
    16. Andreas Buehn & Stefan Eichler, 2011. "Trade Misinvoicing: The Dark Side of World Trade," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 34(8), pages 1263-1287, August.
    17. Bell, Andrew & Jones, Kelvyn, 2015. "Explaining Fixed Effects: Random Effects Modeling of Time-Series Cross-Sectional and Panel Data," Political Science Research and Methods, Cambridge University Press, vol. 3(1), pages 133-153, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Carton, Christine & Slim, Sadri, 2018. "Trade misinvoicing in OECD countries: what can we learn from bilateral trade intensity indices?," MPRA Paper 85703, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Temesgen Worku & Juan P. Mendoza & Jacco L. Wielhouwer, 2016. "Tariff evasion in sub-Saharan Africa: the influence of corruption in importing and exporting countries," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 23(4), pages 741-761, August.
    3. Emmanuel Ekow Asmah & Francis Kwaw Andoh & Edem Titriku, 2020. "Trade misinvoicing effects on tax revenue in sub‐Saharan Africa: The role of tax holidays and regulatory quality," Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 91(4), pages 649-672, December.
    4. Nitsch, Volker, 2011. "Trade Mispricing and Illicit Flows," Publications of Darmstadt Technical University, Institute for Business Studies (BWL) 77397, Darmstadt Technical University, Department of Business Administration, Economics and Law, Institute for Business Studies (BWL).
    5. Dujava, Daniel & Siranova, Maria, 2022. "Is it me or you? A deeper insight into profile of misreporting economies," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 10-25.
    6. Nitsch, Volker, 2016. "Trillion Dollar Estimate: Illicit Financial Flows from Developing Countries," Publications of Darmstadt Technical University, Institute for Business Studies (BWL) 80589, Darmstadt Technical University, Department of Business Administration, Economics and Law, Institute for Business Studies (BWL).
    7. Daniel Dujava & Maria Siranova, 2017. "Getting the Measures of Trade Misinvoicing Right: Bilateral Panel Data Approach," Working Papers wp98, Institute of Economic Research, Slovak Academy of Sciences, revised 20 Dec 2017.
    8. Iwona Markowicz & Paweł Baran, 2022. "Duration of Trade Relationships of Polish Enterprises on the Intra-Community Market: The Case of Vehicles and Automotive Parts Trade," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(6), pages 1-17, March.
    9. Rafat MAHMOOD & Eatzaz AHMAD, 2015. "Measurement Of Import Smuggling In Pakistan," Pakistan Journal of Applied Economics, Applied Economics Research Centre, vol. 25(2), pages 135-159.
    10. Mohammad Farhad & Michael Jetter & Abu Siddique & Andrew Williams, 2018. "Misreported Trade," CESifo Working Paper Series 7150, CESifo.
    11. Mianshan Lai & Jia Hou, 2023. "Let us misinvoice more? The effect of de jure capital controls on trade misinvoicing," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(7), pages 2157-2186, July.
    12. Markowicz Iwona & Baran Paweł, 2020. "Discrepancies Between Mirror Data on Intra-Community Trade: The Case of Poland," Econometrics. Advances in Applied Data Analysis, Sciendo, vol. 24(1), pages 1-11, March.
    13. Farzanegan, Mohammad Reza, 2009. "Illegal trade in the Iranian economy: Evidence from a structural model," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 25(4), pages 489-507, December.
    14. Andreas Buehn & Mohammad Reza Farzanegan, 2012. "Smuggling around the world: evidence from a structural equation model," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(23), pages 3047-3064, August.
    15. Mehdi Abid, 2019. "Estimating the Size of the Informal Trade Across the World: Evidence from a MIMIC Approach," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 10(2), pages 618-669, June.
    16. Yalta, A. Yasemin & Demir, Ishak, 2010. "The Extent of Trade Mis-Invoicing in Turkey: Did Post-1990 Policies Matter?," MPRA Paper 30186, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. Jean-Louis Combes & Alexandru Minea & Pegdéwendé Nestor Sawadogo, 2019. "Assessing the effects of combating illicit financial flows on domestic tax revenue mobilization in developing countries," CERDI Working papers halshs-02019073, HAL.
    18. Cyril Chalendard, 2015. "Use of internal information, external information acquisition and customs underreporting," Working Papers halshs-01179445, HAL.
    19. Connely, Michael & Devereux, John & Cortes, Mariluz, 1995. "The transhipment problem: Smuggling and welfare in Paraguay," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 23(6), pages 975-985, June.
    20. Shaar, Karam & Baharumshah, Ahmad Zubaidi, 2016. "US-China trade: Who is telling the truth?," Working Paper Series 19470, Victoria University of Wellington, School of Economics and Finance.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Money laundering; illicit trade flows; mirror statistics;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E26 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Informal Economy; Underground Economy
    • F14 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Empirical Studies of Trade
    • K42 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bdi:opques:qef_445_18. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/bdigvit.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.