Online Personal Data Processing and EU Data Protection Reform. CEPS Task Force Report, April 2013

This report sheds light on the fundamental questions and underlying tensions between current policy objectives, compliance strategies and global trends in online personal data processing, assessing the existing and future framework in terms of effective regulation and public policy. Based on the discussions among the members of the CEPS Digital Forum and independent research carried out by the rapporteurs, policy conclusions are derived with the aim of making EU data protection policy more fit for purpose in today’s online technological context. This report constructively engages with the EU data protection framework, but does not provide a textual analysis of the EU data protection reform proposal as such

Iowa Department of Commerce, Iowa Insurance Division Performance Report, FY 2007

Agency Performance Repor

Public institutions and private transactions : the legal and regulatory environment for business private transactions in Brazil and Chile

Drawing on the new institutional economics, the authors examine the impact on businesses of Brazil's relatively complex, nontransparent legal and regulatory institutions and compare their costs with those of Chile's institutions, which are relatively simple. They examine four basic areas where legal and regulatory institutions could create critical obstacles to efficiency in the garment industries of Sao Paulo and Santiago: (a) the start-up of a new business (entry); (b) the regulation of business; (c) orders by customers of garment firms; and (d) sales with credit. They find that Chilean business transactions benefit from legal simplicity and more consistent enforcement than in Brazil, but that these perceived advantages are offset because of the differences between formal law and practice in Brazil. In two of these areas, Brazil has evolved some effective institutional substitutes to reduce the costs that would otherwise have been imposed by inefficient formal institutions. In the entry of new businesses, professions have evolved to transform the process of registering a new business from a potentially tortuous obstacle path into a fairly affordable one-stop process. In debt collection, information systems limit the need to resort to the formal legal system. Nevertheless, regulation raises the cost of transactions for Brazilian businesses. Costs are further raised by greater uncertainty and frequent renegotiation of orders.National Governance,Environmental Economics&Policies,Legal Products,Private Participation in Infrastructure,Small Scale Enterprise

Iowa Department of Commerce, Iowa Insurance Division Performance Report, FY 2006

Agency Performance Repor

Aligning anti-money laundering, combating of financing of terror and financial inclusion : Questions to consider when FATF standards are clarified

Purpose &ndash; The purpose of this paper is to identify key questions that should be addressed to enable the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) to provide guidance regarding the alignment of anti-money laundering, combating of financing of terror and financial inclusion objectives.Design/methodology/approach &ndash; The paper draws on relevant research and documents of the FATF to identify questions that are relevant to consider when it formulates guidance regarding the alignment between financial integrity and financial inclusion objectives.Findings &ndash; The FATF advises that its risk-based approach enables countries and institutions to further financial inclusion. It is, however, not clear what the FATF means when its uses the terms &ldquo;risk&rdquo; and &ldquo;low risk&rdquo;. It is also unclear whether current proposals for financial inclusion regulatory models will necessarily limit money laundering (ML) aswell as terror financing risks to levels that can be described as &ldquo;low&rdquo;. The FATF will need to clarify its own thinking regarding low money laundering and low terror financing risk before it will be able to provide clear guidance to national regulators and financial institutions.Originality/value &ndash; This paper was drafted to inform current FATF discussions regarding guidance on financial inclusion. The questions are relevant to all stakeholders in financial regulation.<br /

Taxation of multinational banks : using formulary apportionment to reflect economic reality

The taxation of multinational banks is currently governed by general principles of international tax. However, there are characteristics exclusive to multinational banks that may warrant consideration of a separate taxing regime, as the current system does not produce a result that accurately reflects the economic source of the income or the location of the economic activity. The suggested alternative is unitary taxation using global formulary apportionment

Customer Due Diligence and Its Role To Prevent The Global Economic Threat: Indonesian Anti Money Laundering Perspectives

Money laundering and financing of terrorism is one of the global threats which may occur problems for the economics of the world. The effect of Money Laundering and financing of terrorism have been manifested in the life of the nations. According to its characteristic as a transnational crime, Money laundering and financing of terrorism have been a major concern of all the countries and law enforcement agents. In this situation, law shall be a major instrument to tackle money laundering and financing of terrorism, but Customer Due Diligence and Enhance Due Diligence plays a great part to prevent money laundering and other variant of crime. The effective and efficient measure to recognize the customer who has a suspicious character of money laundering and financing of terrorism is using the method of knowing correctly and precisely their customer’s profile. Customer Due Diligence is the first resort which may operate as the first procedure which should be taken by all Financial Services Provider and also Goods and Services Providers. As a tool, Customer Due Diligence should be followed by the professionalism and awareness of the parties involved, such as bank and goods and service providers, since it is not easy to recognize the money laundering and also financing of terrorism. The presence of Law Number 8 of 2010 of Republic of Indonesia actually tries to strengthen the implementation of the Principle of Know Your Services Users or also known as the Know Your Customer Principle

Sources of Guns to Dangerous People: What We Learn By Asking Them

Gun violence exacts a lethal toll on public health. This paper focuses on reducing access to firearms by dangerous offenders, contributing original empirical data on the gun transactions that arm offenders in Chicago. Conducted in the fall of 2013, analysis of an open-ended survey of 99 inmates of Cook County Jail focuses on a subset of violence-prone individuals with the goal of improving law enforcement actions. Among our principal findings:Our respondents (adult offenders living in Chicago or nearby) obtain most of their guns from their social network of personal connections. Rarely is the proximate source either direct purchase from a gun store, or theft.Only about 60% of guns in the possession of respondents were obtained by purchase or trade. Other common arrangements include sharing guns and holding guns for others.About one in seven respondents report selling guns, but in only a few cases as a regular source of income.Gangs continue to play some role in Chicago in organizing gun buys and in distributing guns to members as needed.The Chicago Police Department has a considerable effect on the workings of the underground gun market through deterrence. Transactions with strangers and less-trusted associates are limited by concerns over arrest risk (if the buyer should happen to be an undercover officer or a snitch), and about being caught with a "dirty" gun (one that has been fired in a crime)

Deals versus Rules: Policy Implementation Uncertainty and Why Firms Hate It

Firms in Africa report "regulatory and economic policy uncertainty" as a top constraint to their growth. We argue that often firms in Africa do not cope with policy rules, rather they face deals; firm-specific policy actions that can be influenced by firm actions (e.g. bribes) and characteristics (e.g. political connections). Using Enterprise Survey data we demonstrate huge variability in reported policy actions across firms notionally facing the same policy. The within-country dispersion in firm-specific policy actions is larger than the cross-national differences in average policy. We show that variability in this policy implementation uncertainty within location-sector-size cells is correlated with firm growth rates. These measures of implementation variability are more strongly related to lower firm employment growth than are measures of "average" policy action. Finally, we show that the de jure measures such as Doing Business indicators are virtually uncorrelated with ex-post firm-level responses, further evidence that deals rather than rules prevail in Africa. Strikingly, the gap between de jure and de facto conditions grows with the formal regulatory burden. The evidence also shows more burdensome processes open up more space for making deals; firms may not incur the official costs of compliance, but they still pay to avoid them. Finally, measures of institutional capacity and better governance are closely associated with perceived consistency in implementation.

Deals versus rules : policy implementation uncertainty and why firms hate it

Firms in Africa report"regulatory and economic policy uncertainty"as a top constraint to their growth. This paper argues that often firms in Africa do not cope with policy rules, rather they face deals: firm-specific policy actions that can be influenced by firm actions (such as bribes) and characteristics (such as political connections). Using Enterprise Surveydata, the paper demonstrates huge variability in reported policy actions across firms notionally facing the same policy. The within-country dispersion in firm-specific policy actions is larger than the cross-national differences in average policy. The analysis shows that variability in this policy implementation uncertainty within location-sector-size cells is correlated with firm growth rates. These measures of implementation variability are more strongly related to lower firm employment growth than are measures of"average"policy action. The paper shows that the de jure measures such as Doing Business indicators are virtually uncorrelated with ex-post firm-level responses, further evidence that deals rather than rules prevail in Africa. Strikingly, the gap between de jure and de facto conditions grows with the formal regulatory burden. The evidence also shows more burdensome processes open up more space for making deals; firms may not incur the official costs of compliance, but they still pay to avoid them. Finally, measures of institutional capacity and better governance are closely associated with perceived consistency in implementation.Environmental Economics&Policies,Microfinance,Public Sector Corruption&Anticorruption Measures,Climate Change Policy and Regulation,Climate Change Economics