Title: Expropriations, Property Confiscations and New Offshore Entities: Evidence from the Panama Papers,
Abstract: Using the Panama Papers, we show that the beginning of media reporting on
expropriations and property confiscations in a country increases the
probability that offshore entities are incorporated by agents from the same
country in the same month. This result is robust to the use of country-year
fixed effects and the exclusion of tax havens. Further analysis shows that the
effect is driven by countries with non-corrupt and effective governments, which
supports the notion that offshore entities are incorporated when reasonably
well-intended and well-functioning governments become more serious about
fighting organized crime by confiscating proceeds of crime.