• The End of Bank Secrecy? An Evaluation of the G20 Tax Haven Crackdown. Working Paper January 2012, Joint with Niels Johannesen

During the financial crisis, G20 countries compelled tax havens to sign bilateral treaties providing for exchange of bank information. Policymakers have celebrated this global initiative as the end of bank secrecy. Exploiting a unique panel dataset, we study how the treaties affected bank deposits in tax havens. Most tax evaders, our results suggest, did not respond to the treaties. A minority responded by transferring deposits to havens not covered by a treaty. Overall, the G20 tax haven crackdown caused a modest relocation of deposits between havens but no significant repatriation of funds: the era of bank secrecy is not over. 

• The Missing Wealth of Nations: Are Europe and the U.S. net Debtors or net Creditors? Working Paper March 2012, FEEM Award at the 2011 EEA Congress

This paper shows that official statistics substantially underestimate the net foreign asset positions of rich countries because they fail to capture most of the assets held by households in offshore tax havens. Drawing on systematic anomalies in portfolio investment positions and a unique Swiss dataset, I find that 8% of the global financial wealth of households is held in tax havens, 6% of which goes unrecorded. On the basis of plausible assumptions, accounting for unrecorded assets turns the eurozone, officially the world’s second largest net debtor, into a net creditor. It also reduces the U.S. net debt significantly. The results shed new light on global imbalances and challenge the widespread view that, after a decade of poor-to-rich capital flows, external assets are now in poor countries and debts in rich countries. I provide concrete proposals to improve international investment statistics. 

1. Working Paper, March 2012 (Revised and Resubmitted, Quarterly Journal of Economics)
2. Data Appendix (137 p.)
3. Excel file containing all Tables and Figures included in the Working Paper
4. Excel file containing all Tables and Figures included in the Appendix
5. Stata files

• Les hauts patrimoines fuient-ils l'ISF ? Une estimation sur la période 1995-2006, PSE Master Thesis