TY - BOOK ID - 135751262 TI - IMF Programs and Financial Flows to Offshore Centers AU - Aiyar, Shekhar. AU - Patnam, Manasa. PY - 2021 SN - 151359088X PB - Washington, D.C. : International Monetary Fund, DB - UniCat KW - Macroeconomics KW - Economics: General KW - International Economics KW - Banks and Banking KW - Criminology KW - Exports and Imports KW - Industries: Financial Services KW - Money and Monetary Policy KW - Foreign Exchange KW - Informal Economy KW - Underground Econom KW - International Lending and Debt Problems KW - Bureaucracy KW - Administrative Processes in Public Organizations KW - Corruption KW - Foreign Aid KW - Banks KW - Depository Institutions KW - Micro Finance Institutions KW - Mortgages KW - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit: General KW - Economic & financial crises & disasters KW - Economics of specific sectors KW - Banking KW - Corporate crime KW - white-collar crime KW - International economics KW - Finance KW - Monetary economics KW - Offshore financial centers KW - Financial services KW - Crime KW - Foreign aid KW - Loans KW - Financial institutions KW - Bank credit KW - Money KW - Currency crises KW - Informal sector KW - Economics KW - International finance KW - International relief KW - Credit UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:135751262 AB - This paper examines whether IMF lending is associated with increases in outflows to offshore financial centers (OFCs), known for bank secrecy and asset protection, relative to other international destinations. Using quarterly data from the BIS on bilateral bank deposits, we are unable to detect any positive and statistically significant effect of IMF loan disbursements on bank deposits in OFCs. The result holds even after restricting the sample to the duration of the IMF program, where disbursement quarters and non-disbursement quarters should be subject to similar degrees of macroeconomic stress. It is also robust to using the scheduled tranche of disbursements as an instrument for actual disbursements. While the effects vary by the type and conditionality of the IMF program, as well as the amount of lending, none of the effects are found to be positive and statistically significant. We also estimate whether the recent surge in emergency lending, during the Covid-19 crisis, is associated with an increase in outflows to OFCs but find no evidence to support this. ER -