This book considers a wide range of illicit industries in China, exploring what drives such activities, why consumers tolerate them to differing degrees, how attempts to regulate them are implemented and how such regulation is resisted. Industries considered include human smuggling, human organs trade, illicit pharmaceuticals, smuggling of animal parts, illegal logging and trade of woods, food safety and shadow banking. Throughout, the book describes how the shadow economy works, analyses the degree to which illicit activities are regarded as criminal and highlights the importance of the shadow economy for certain regions of China and certain sections of Chinese society. In doing so, it reveals the challenges of human security posed by these industries not only for China, but also for the global community, and considers a robust governance mechanism at both national and global levels to address these challenges. Overall, the book provides a very rich picture of a key aspect of China’s contemporary economy which is difficult to research.

This book presents new data to give an overview of shadow economies from OECD countries and propose solutions to prevent illicit work.

A groundbreaking investigation of how illicit commerce is changing the world by transforming economies, reshaping politics, and capturing governments.In this fascinating and comprehensive examination of the underside of globalization, Moises Naím illuminates the struggle between traffickers and the hamstrung bureaucracies trying to control them. From illegal migrants to drugs to weapons to laundered money to counterfeit goods, the black market produces enormous profits that are reinvested to create new businesses, enable terrorists, and even to take over governments. Naím reveals the inner workings of these amazingly efficient international organizations and shows why it is so hard — and so necessary to contain them. Riveting and deeply informed, Illicit will change how you see the world around you.

Economists explore the relationship between expanding international trade and the parallel growth in illicit trade, including illegal drugs, smuggling, and organized crime. As international trade has expanded dramatically in the postwar period--an expansion accelerated by the opening of China, Russia, India, and Eastern Europe--illicit international trade has grown in tandem with it. This volume uses the economist's toolkit to examine the economic, political, and social problems resulting from such illicit activities as illegal drug trade, smuggling, and organized crime. The contributors consider several aspects of the illegal drug market, including the sometimes puzzling relationships among purity, price, and risk; the effect of globalization on the heroin and cocaine markets, examined both through mathematical models and with empirical data from the U.K; the spread of khat, a psychoactive drug imported legally to the U.K. as a vegetable; and the economic effect of the "war on drugs" on producer and consumer countries. Other chapters examine the hidden financial flows of organized crime, patterns of smuggling in international trade, Iran's illicit trading activity, and the impact of mafia-like crime on foreign direct investment in Italy.

A large percentage of workers and firms operate in the informal economy, outside the line of sight of governments in emerging market and developing economies. This may hold back the recovery in these economies from the deep recessions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic--unless governments adopt a broad set of policies to address the challenges of widespread informality. This study is the first comprehensive analysis of the extent of informality and its implications for a durable economic recovery and for long-term development. It finds that pervasive informality is associated with significantly weaker economic outcomes--including lower government resources to combat recessions, lower per capita incomes, greater poverty, less financial development, and weaker investment and productivity.

This report assesses the magnitude, flows and drivers of illicit trade and the illegal economy including: narcotics, human trafficking, wildlife, sports betting, counterfeit medicines, alcohol and tobacco. The negative socio-economic impacts that these markets have in consumer countries are as worrisome as the goverance gaps that are exploited in source countries. This report examines each illicit sector in terms of the geographic sources, destinations and key trade routes, the current trend of infiltration by organized crime networks, and good practices or future policy solutions with which to combat illicit trade within the various sectors.

Fueled by corruption, fraud, and organized crime, the shadow economy also known as the informal, black market, illegal, or underground economy is currently on the rise worldwide. Corruption, Fraud, Organized Crime, and the Shadow Economy addresses shadow economies and the players involved by examining various aspects of criminal law and prosecution