Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/267828 
Year of Publication: 
2022
Series/Report no.: 
WIDER Working Paper No. 2022/76
Publisher: 
The United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER), Helsinki
Abstract: 
Economic data are important in governing the international political economy. Some of the most widely used macro statistics risk being undermined by systematic misalignment in reporting of economic activity due to illicit financial flows, as well as tax-minimizing financial transactions by multinational corporations. Measuring these misalignments may prove a way to correct old statistical standards, if adequate data can be obtained. We evaluate whether new transparency and reporting regimes that require country-by-country reporting by multinational corporations could prove a feasible way to appropriate the amount of tax avoidance and use these figures to correct macro statistics. We evaluate the existing data for two of the standards through previous literature and provide original analysis of a third standard that is applied to the extractive industries. We find that the standards lack coherence and workability, and that particularly the extractive industry standard falls short of enabling thorough research on profit reporting and taxmotivated misalignments by multinational corporations.
Subjects: 
economic data
tax avoidance
illicit financial flows
country-by-country reporting
extractive industries
JEL: 
C82
E01
H25
G28
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
ISBN: 
978-92-9267-207-2
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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