Agenda

31 Gen 2019 12:30

Jakob Miethe - The elusive banker

Meeting Room 1, Campus San Giobbe, Venezia

Jakob Miethe, Humboldt University Berlin

Titolo completo: The elusive banker: Using hurricanes to uncover (non-)activity in offshore financial centers

 

ABSTRACT
A number of small islands in the Caribbean and the Pacific are accumulating billions of dollars in international capital. Are these positions attracted by specialized human capital and innovative financial services, as such Offshore Financial Centers (OFCs) claim? Or are they the result of regulatory arbitrage as some economists assume, pointing to financial stability and effective taxation concerns? Based on several novel data sources, this study exploits the natural experiment of re-occurring hurricanes to test for reactions in financial service activity of OFCs. I find that local activity, captured by geospatial satellite data on nightlight intensity, decreases by 30-50% for at least 6 months. However, in OFCs neither the interbank market nor international investors react, while non-OFC islands do show strong negative reactions. Only local company incorporations decline in OFCs after hurricanes hit and this activity can be linked to financial hubs such as London. These results suggest that the high-powered financial service activities leading to the large international capital positions of OFCs take place elsewhere and that OFCs do not create value by providing human capital or financial services locally.

Lingua

L'evento si terrà in italiano

Organizzatore

Dipartimento di Economia (JMSeminars)

Link

https://www.jakobmiethe.net/

Allegati

Paper 1126 KB

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