Money Laundering - A Newly Emerging Topic on the International Agenda

Money laundering - bringing illicit proceeds from drugs, fraud and other crime, back into the legal economy - has become an issue of international concern only in the last twenty years. Since 9/11 it has figured as a prominent issue of national and international safety on the agenda of international organizations such as the Financial Action Task Force, the IMF, the United Nations, the Bank of International Settlement, and the European Union. Since then, the need to know more about the volume of laundering and laundering techniques, about the behavior of launderers, the effects of laundering on crime and on the economy, and the potential for successful anti-money laundering policy, has dramatically increased. So far, the academic field of the economics of crime has not devoted much attention to financial crime. And the economics of finance has not dealt with criminal behavior The first three papers presented in this issue will show three very different ways of making use of economics to estimate money laundering. The last three papers show how the law and economics literature especially can be used to analyze the role of anti-money laundering policy.