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2018 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

2. How Illicit Financial Flows Are Estimated

Author : Alberto Aziani

Published in: Illicit Financial Flows

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

The chapter describes the main approaches for estimating illicit financial flows (IFFs) in extant literature. In particular, it considers the underlying ideas and the data required for the estimation, along with outlining the manifold limitations of the respective methods. The semantic and conceptual difficulties involved in interpreting IFFs, allied with the broadness of the definition itself, are echoed in its operationalization and the design of the methods used to estimate it. Overall, there is a clear lacuna in the literature with respect to accurate scales and patterns of IFFs. All the proposed methods suffer from several limitations, some of which appear to be insurmountable. The chapter suggests that the development of reliable synthetic indicators of IFFs requires breaking IFFs down into their constituent components.

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previous chapter Illicit Financial Flows: Conceptual and Operational Issues

next chapter A New Strategy to Estimate the Illicit Financial Flows

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Title: How Illicit Financial Flows Are Estimated
Author: Alberto Aziani
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
Book: Illicit Financial Flows
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-01889-4

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-030-01890-0

Copyright Year: 2018
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01890-0_2