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This paper aims to examine the contribution of Ethiopia’s cash economy to financial crimes. It also investigates the regulation of cash in the context of controlling crime stemming from the cash economy.

This study relies on primary data generated from 20 interviewees drawn from the National Bank of Ethiopia, Ethiopian Financial Intelligence Center, selected commercial banks and law enforcement agencies and document review from government reports, media press and statutes, as well as secondary data from online and offline sources.

The cash-intensive nature of Ethiopia’s economy has enabled a significant amount of cash to circulate outside of the formal financial system. This money is partly to blame for the prevalence of criminal activities such as cash hoarding, corruption and illicit financial flows. To address the threat of crime posed by the cash economy, the Ethiopian Government has taken measures such as restricting cash withdrawals from financial institutions, limiting the amount of cash individuals can hold and demonetizing the banknotes. The measures enable the banks to collect the cash circulating outside of the formal financial sector. However, the effect of these measures on reducing future criminality remains uncertain. Improving the financial inclusivity of the country, specifically expanding basic financial products to the rural areas, digitalizing the country’s payment system, raising general financial awareness and establishing a strong financial consumer protection framework would play a critical role in reducing future criminality and transforming the cash-intensive into a cashless economy.

This paper provides a first-of-its-kind analytical perspective on the contribution of Ethiopia’s cash economy to criminal activity and the adequacy of countermeasures so far taken.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of and comment on various aspects of reverse money laundering, whereby, instead of “washing” criminal proceeds to make them legal, legitimate funds are withdrawn from formal circulation and pumped into the informal sector to evade taxes, hand in bribes, pay “under-the-table” salaries and sidestep paperwork.

The paper is divided into two parts. The theoretical part reviews the relevant academic literature and discusses the role of cash as a dominant medium of exchange in the underground economy. The empirical part is grounded on a qualitative analysis of several case studies of fraudulent encashment schemes all of which illustrate how reverse money laundering works.

The findings suggest that fraudulent encashment, a type of reverse money laundering, is performed via bank and non-bank institutions. Importantly, methods and techniques used in conventional forms of money laundering are also used in reverse money laundering schemes.

Despite a large volume of literature on money laundering, reverse money laundering remains an understudied area. This paper discusses the peculiarities of illegal transfers of non-cash assets into cash, which have been the pronounced problem in Russia and other post-Soviet countries since the 1990s.

The purpose of this paper is to explain the cash‐in‐hand consumer culture in the property and construction sector. The conventional assumption has been that consumers using cash‐in‐hand transactions are rational economic actors doing so simply to save money. Here, this is evaluated critically.

To do this, evidence from a 2007 Eurobarometer survey involving 26,659 face‐to‐face interviews in 27 European Union member states is reported.

The finding is that saving money is the sole motive of consumers in just 38 per cent of cash‐in‐hand transactions in the European property and construction sector, one of several rationales in 38 per cent of exchanges and not cited as a rationale in the remaining 24 per cent of cases. Besides, saving money, consumers engage in cash‐in‐hand transactions to circumvent the shortcomings of formal sector provision in terms of its availability, speed and quality, as well as for social and redistributive rationales.

This paper reveals the need for in‐depth qualitative research to unravel consumers' complex and heterogeneous rationales for using this sphere.

The implication is that changing the cost/benefit ratio confronting consumers when choosing to use the cash‐in‐hand economy is unlikely to be successful since cost is, in most cases, not their only rationale. Instead, attention needs to be given to improving the availability, speed, reliability and quality of formal sector provision and dealing with cash‐in‐hand work conducted for social and redistributive purposes.

This paper refutes the assumption that goods and services are acquired from the cash‐in‐hand economy solely in order to save money.

This paper aims to examine the impact on executive compensation (both cash and in total) of regulation, size of sales and number of employees, and nature of the business in terms of new‐economy vs traditional.

This study uses the ExecuComp database as the information source. Regression analysis is used to test hypotheses that focus on firm size in terms of sales, market and accounting returns, and the number of firm employees. The sample consists of 455 US firms from 25 industries, and covers the period 1996‐2002.

Firm size and market‐based return are the most significant explanatory variables in affecting executive compensation. More limited support was found for accounting‐based returns, as was changes in the number of employees.

Findings of this study may be limited by the temporal context. Around the turn of this century may have been an unusual time in America's corporate history. The economic outlook of the late 1990s may be fundamentally different from the one facing firms now or in the future. Consequently, future research will be needed to determine to what extent these results can be generalized to periods of different economic prospects.

This study examines the impact of firms' operational characteristic on Chief Executive Officer (CEO) compensation.

This study aims to investigate the influence of macroeconomic conditions on corporate cash holdings in terms of their influence on the level of cash and the speed of adjustment of cash to target levels in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries (GCC).

The study employs both static and dynamic regression analyses considering a sample of 2,878 firm-year observations drawn from stock markets in GCC countries over the 2010–2018 period.

Consistent with the precautionary motive, the results show that GCC firms tend to accumulate cash reserves in weak economic periods. Evidence also reveals that the estimated adjustment coefficients from dynamic panel models show that GCC firms adjust more slowly toward their target cash ratio in periods of unfavorable economic conditions.

This study has important implications for managers, policymakers and regulators. For managers, the study is an important reference to understand and design cash management policies by considering financial constraints imposed by macroeconomic conditions. In particular, managers should pay more attention to periods of credit crunch and weak economic conditions in which firms may be exposed to greater bankruptcy risks. For policymakers and regulators, this study may be useful in assessing the effect of macroeconomic factors on firm's cash holding decision. Therefore, in an effort to increase the supply of external financing available to firms, policymakers may devise investment friendly environment by controlling macroeconomic factors.

This paper offers some insights on the macro determinants of cash holdings by investigating emerging economies. It explores the role of macroeconomic conditions on corporate cash holdings in terms of their influence on the costs of external funds and financial constraints.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic altered business and personal activities globally especially stimulating contactless financial transactions. However, despite the similar national lockdowns in cash-based economies, the adoption of contactless transactions through the widely available mechanism, mobile wallets, remained low. This research aimed to identify the factors surrounding this peculiarity.

The study was investigated using a composite model based on the diffusion of innovation theory (DIT), technology acceptance model (TAM) and information systems success model (ISSM). Data were collected from 621 Cameroonian mobile wallet users and analyzed using partial least squares structural equation (PLS-SEM) modeling.

The key findings revealed that the usage of mobile wallets, in the current form, were not affected by the perceived ease of use and did not match the existing lifestyle of users in Cameroon (no compatibility). The branding of mobile wallets (image) which was based on global messaging did not appeal to Cameroonians; in fact, the branding gave mobile wallets a negative image.

These key findings reveal the dangers of assuming that global strategies which have been effective in dealing with the pandemic will be effective in low-income or cash-based economies. The findings suggest that considering essential contextual dispositions is critical.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the treats hindering war against illicit financial flows of organised crime in developing economies and Nigeria in particular. The examination shows that the impediments facing the fight against money laundering and organised crime financial flows vary from one country to another. It may be lesser in developed economies where most instruments, treaties and best practice recommendations to curb serious crime originated from. However, the impediments against the proceeds of organised crime in developing economies are overwhelming.

The research methodology adopted was qualitative analysis. This was applied through the use and analysis of documents and expert interviews.

The impediments jeopardising the success against organised crime and other related serious crime financial flows in developing economies are devastating. Consequently, the study offered some policy implications to help mitigate these impediments in developing countries. The dynamics and the phenomena of organised crime business model are operated with ingenious strategies within the global states. Therefore, staying in control of the menace and the threats originated from the organised criminal activities would require periodic review of the global initiatives, standards and strategies deployed by the standard setters to combat organised crime and its financial flows in developing and evolving economies. Additionally, the implementing countries should be carried along and allow to make inputs when such initiatives and standards are being developed.

In Nigeria, there is a clear evidence of “collateral damage” in terms of social justice as result of financial exclusion of many bankable adults of the country that do not possess unique identities for account opening documentation and customer due diligence of the Financial Action Task Force recommendation 10.

There have been quite a number of studies on organised crime and still fewer have recognised the need to explore the success or failure of combating the proceeds of crime in developing economies. This study provides answer to these gaps by screening associated risks of fighting the proceeds of organised crime in developing countries and Nigeria in particular.

This paper aims to examine the effect of financial technology on cash holding in Nigeria.

The authors use Pesaran et al.’s (2001) autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds test approach to cointegration to estimate the long-run relationship between four direct measures of financial technology (automated teller machine [ATM], Internet banking [IB], point of sale [POS] and mobile banking [MB]) and cash holding.

The authors find the presence of long-run negative relationship between cash holding and the four direct measures of financial technology.

Despite the negative effect of financial technology on cash holding, the descriptive results highlight increasing trajectory in cash holding. This suggests that structural factors such as ethical climate, literacy level, household characteristics, currency denomination structures, economic uncertainty and infrastructure deficit may account for the pervasive cash transactions in Nigeria and not necessarily the unwillingness of economic agents to use digital platform for financial transactions.

This study contributes to existing literature by augmenting the money demand function to accommodate direct measures of financial technology in examining the effectiveness of the policy on cash holding in Nigeria.

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) recently relaunched Nigeria’s cashless policy initiative which seeks to reduce financial crime and tax avoidance, decrease cash dependency, advance the adoption of digital financial services (DFS), decrease the risks to the payment system and foster financial inclusion. This study aims to identify the unique challenges of going cashless in Nigeria, particularly in terms of infrastructural, exclusionary and cost implications of the policy on the average citizens.

The author applies a doctrinal research methodology to identify and reflect on key challenges of the cashless policy from the economic, regulatory and transactional perspectives.

The cashless policy initiative in Nigeria heralds value for financial integrity, financial policy regulation and user convenience. The mode of introduction, however, ushers in significant challenges and hardly considers Nigeria’s inadequate payment infrastructure, persistent financial exclusion, low levels of financial and digital literacy and capability, high cost of using DFS and pervasive proclivity for cash. As Nigerians adjust albeit inconveniently to the policy, the CBN can ameliorate the hardship by strengthening the payment infrastructure, particularly for digital payments, fostering consumer trust by safeguarding user funds and enabling consumer preferences.

Research materials include the national regulator’s policy documents and newspaper articles that have not been published in formal reports but non-the-less adequately mirror the policy intention of the CBN and the lived experiences of Nigerians.

This study identifies the practical steps and regulatory measures that the CBN can take to improve acceptance and meaningful and sustainable adoption of the cashless policy by the majority of Nigerians.

The recommendations that are proffered provide some rich insights to inform regulatory direction for the CBN to seamlessly phase-in the cashless policy and consequently drive down financial exclusion in Nigeria.

This study contributes to the policy discussion around the introduction of the cashless Nigeria project. The doctrinal research method highlights the policy intentions of the regulator in juxtaposition with lived experiences of Nigerians. This study offers recommendations to bolster financial inclusion, stability and integrity.

The purpose of this study is to identify money laundering typologies and techniques in Ethiopia.

This is a descriptive study that relies on primary data generated from interviewees drawn from the Ethiopian Financial Intelligence Center, Ethiopian Customs Commission, selected commercial banks and law enforcement agencies, as well as secondary data from government reports, media press, statutes and other online and offline sources.

According to this study, criminals in Ethiopia used several laundering techniques, the most common of which are money laundering using financial institutions, trade-based money laundering, cash-based money laundering, money laundering through illegal hawala, shell companies, or anonymous beneficiaries. Criminals have recently been suspected of using financial technologies and virtual currencies to launder the proceeds of their illicit activities. The laundering strategies are extremely intertwined and their distinction remains highly blurred. Moreover, the typologies are operated transnationally, despite being highly tailored to Ethiopia’s political economy.

This is one of the very few papers to date that provides the typologies and techniques of money laundering, specifically in the context of cash-intensive economies.