Niels Johannesen, University of Copenhagen

24 February 15:00 to 16:15
Online

Niels Johannesen

Niels Johannesen

About the speaker

Niels Johannesen is a professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Copenhagen (2018 to present).  His primary fields of research are International Taxation, Tax Evasion, Tax Avoidance, Tax Planning, Taxation of Multinational Firms, Taxation and Regulation of the Financial Sector. 

Current research projects:

What is the effect of bank taxation on riskiness in the financial sector?
How do financial crises spread to the real economy?
Who owns the offshore wealth and why?

Professor Johannesen has a Ph.D. (2010) and M.Sc (2004) in Economics from the University of Copenhagen, an M.A. in European Economics, College of Europe, Bruges, Belgium (2003), and a B.A. in Economics, University of Copenhagen (2001).

 

Title

Elite Capture of Foreign Aid : Evidence from Offshore Bank Accounts

Jørgen Juel Andersen (BI Norwegian Business School), Niels Johannesen (University of Copenhagen and CEBI), Bob Rijkers (The World Bank)

Abstract:    
Do elites capture foreign aid? This paper documents that aid disbursements to highly aid-dependent countries coincide with sharp increases in bank deposits in offshore financial centers known for bank secrecy and private wealth management, but not in other financial centers. The estimates are not confounded by contemporaneous shocks such as civil conflicts, natural disasters, and financial crises, and are robust to instrumenting with predetermined aid commitments. The implied leakage rate is around 7.5 percent at the sample mean and tends to increase with the ratio of aid to GDP. The findings are consistent with aid capture in the most aid-dependent countries.
 

 

 

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