Date: June 13, 2024
This seminar was led by Dr Maleke Fourati. Organ transplant technology saves lives and significantly improves the life quality of patients who would otherwise depend on very intrusive - and expensive - medical treatment. From a health economic perspective, organ transplants are an efficient way to cure several diseases. But the problem is a considerable shortage of donated organs where demand outweighs supply by far. Up to this date, most research on how to encourage organ donation has focused on Western economies. However, the optimal policy choice is likely to depend on the cultural context. This research aims to make a first contribution to fill this gap by evaluating the impact of an informational intervention on young adults’ willingness to become deceased organ donors in the context of Tunisia.
Date: September 10, 2024
Dr. Sami Bensassi (Birmingham Business School) presented his paper titled "Combating trade-related fraud: Do the Financial Action Task Force recommendations bite?"
Paper's abstract: We evaluate the efficacy of “the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) Recommendations 2012”, which set the global standard on combating money laundering and terrorist financing, by exploiting its staggered adoption in 16 East and South African countries. Using the trade gap as a proxy for trade-related fraud activities, such as trade-based money laundering (TBML), we find that the adoption of the FATF recommendations is correlated with a 15.3% reduction in trade-related fraud. The FATF is particularly effective within countries with capable state and low corruption. The magnitude of which the FATF adoption can reduce trade-related fraud depends on a country’s compliance level. Our results are robust to a series of robustness checks and contribute to a lively policy debate surrounding the role of international organisations in combating the financing of organised crimes.
