Tax Evasion and Money Laundering - Research Paper Example

Unit Lecturer Project .Dicuss how you would employ an experiment design using teenage tax evasion and money laundering Money laundering is the act to conceal the accurate source of money by distributing them via a series of ostensibly rightful dealings. Since it frequently involves unlawful actions, monetary institutions have the task to notice and notify about them to the proper administration agencies in an appropriate manner. Nevertheless, funds laundering detection is not an easy task due to the large number of dealings that are carried out daily. The common approach adopted by monetary organizations is to extort some synopsis figures from the operation history and do a systematic and prolonged study on those financial records that come out to be apprehensive. Its primary role is to hide the truth that finances were optimal standard minimizes the degree of the assurance ellipsoid of the parameter (Silvey,1980). The basis is solved from the final approximation of the function. The presentation of the experimental design approach is model reliant. It operates well when the unspecified model is the accurate model, but the presentation deteriorates as the model deviates from the definite true model. One appealing property of the experimental estimate techniques, including the logit-MLE, is the sturdiness of their presentation to replica assumptions. This is because as n grows, the points are concentrated around the source, which permit the judgment of basis irrespective of the model assumption. Reasonably, the presentation of the stochastic estimate means is not as good as the optimal design when the assumed model in the latter approach is valid. One failing of the above-mentioned method is that it can only be useful to univariate problems. But in cash laundering finding example and other applications (e.g.,junk email classification), more than one arithmetical characteristic of the data are of interest. Therefore, it is significant to expand the presented techniques’ to multivariate matters Discuss how you would employ an historical/comparative research approach to tax evasion and money laundering. Ever since 1989, when the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) implemented its 40 recommendations to adjust anti-money laundering systems across the world, an combination of state and worldwide institutions have mushroomed to take on the duty. Nine methods have been recommended for Combating the Money Laundering and Tax Evasion The recommended objectives include removal of profit from offense through taking away, detecting crime through following the money track, and targeting third party or specialized launderers who via their services tolerate criminals to hold the takings of their crime. In addition, targeting the higher echelons of the criminal association whose only link to the crime is the funds trail would help curb money laundering and tax evasion. On top of that, shielding the integrity of the financial system against abuse by criminals would be of great assistance. Replacing the word crime with tax dodging and criminals with tax evaders and it would be a system for a future Anti Tax Evasion (ATE) rule. Nevertheless, as the AML regime has been continually efficient since its early formation and numerous joint evaluations between states have taken place, there is an increasing responsiveness that the AML is not operating as well as planned. What guidelines would you suggest adhering to in designing a questionnaire 1. Develop a professional, attractive and neat questionnaire; fonts should be big enough to avoid eyestrain; directions for finishing the survey should be simple to comprehend. If your survey has numerous pages, it should be bound in a booklet to avoid mix up of pages and, if respondents are to look at the survey, it should have a good-looking cover. 2. Make the survey simple to complete; the check boxes or lines easy to see; and the numbers to be circled far enough apart so that the interviewer will not unintentionally circle two numbers. If you are using scan able forms, where bubbles need to be filled in completely and with a specific writing utensil such as a number 2 pencil, make sure the instructions are clear and easy to find. 3. Number your questions clearly. This will lessen the chance, particularly in longer surveys, of respondents or interviewers getting lost. 4. Start with a brief introduction describing the survey's purpose, the topics being covered and how the results will be used. Also, mention any incentive for completing the survey, such as a drawing entry, the opportunity to have a copy of the results and so on. STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES OF SURVEY RESEARCH Strengths 1. High Representativeness: Surveys gives a high degree of capability to represent a large population. Because of the great number of people who participate in surveys, the data collected has a better description of the relative characteristics of the wide population involved in the research. Compared to other techniques of data collection, surveys have the ability to get data that which is exact from big population. 2. Low Costs: The costs involved in carrying out survey are quite minimal since the expenses mostly incurred are in the production of survey questionnaires. 3. Convenient Data Gathering: it is a convenient means of data collection since the questionnaire can be sent out through fax, email etc. Besides the convenience of data collection, researchers are able to collect data from people all over the world. Weakness of Surveys 1. Inflexible Design: The researcher has to use the same survey and methods of collection of data throughout the process without changing it. 2. Not Ideal for Controversial Issues: Any controversy arising in the questions may not be precisely may make it difficult for the participants to respond them correctly. 3. Possible Inappropriateness of Questions: The general question required in order to accommodate everyone in the population may not be appropriate for all the participating persons. . Qualitative vs. Quantitative analysis Corpus analysis can be widely categorized as an inclusion of qualitative and quantitative analysis. Qualitative analysis: Richness and Precision The objective of qualitative analysis is an absolute description, which is very detailed. There are no chances to assign frequencies to the linguistic character, which are identified in the data. Qualitative analysis gives room for fine differences to be made since it is not important to shoehorn the data into classifications of finite number. Inherent ambiguities in human language can be realized in the analysis. The main weakness of qualitative approaches to corpus analysis is that their outcome cannot be spread to wider populations with the same level of confidence that quantitative analyses can. This is because the answer of the research are not weathered to discover if they are statistically momentous or due to likelihood. Quantitative analysis: Statistically reliable and generalisable results In quantitative research, we organize features, tally them, and even create more compound statistical models in an effort to make clear what is practical. Result can be widespread to a wider population, and direct comparisons drawn between two corpora, as much as valid sampling and significance methods have been employed. Consequently, quantitative analysis allows us to discover which phenomenon are most likely genuine reflections of the performance of a language or diversity, and which are merely chance happenings. Nevertheless, the image of the data, which result from quantitative analysis, is less rich than that realized from qualitative analysis. Quantitative analysis is hence a glorification of the data in some cases. Moreover, quantitative analysis tends to marginalize rare occurrences. Rationalization and bureaucracy Rationalization process is the realistic appliance of knowledge to accomplish a preferred end. It results to coordination, efficiency and the control over both social and physical surroundings. It is the guide principle at the back bureaucracy and the rising levels of division of labour. It has result to the unparalleled raise in both the distribution and production of merchandise and services. It is too, connected well with the process of depersonalization, secularization and harsh routine. Progressively more, human performance is guided by surveillance, experimentation and reason to master the ordinary and social setting to achieve a preferred end. Weber's all-purpose hypothesis of rationalization (of which bureaucratic development is but a fastidious case) refers to escalating human mastery above the ordinary and communal atmosphere. In turn, these variations in social arrangement have distorted human personality through varying morals, philosophy, and attitude. Such super structural norms and values as efficiency, individualism, self-discipline, calculability and materialism, have been lighthearted by the bureaucratic practice. Rationalization and bureaucracy were speedily replacing all other form of association and thought. Rationalization is the course whereby all area of human dealings is subject to computation and management. While Marxists have celebrated the distinction of rational computation in factory regulation and the labor procedure, Weber detected rationalization in every social globe – religion, politics, economic organization, university management, the laboratory and even musical memo. How did Mead conceptualize society? How does his view of society differ from that of simmel? Mead’s hypothetical influences ranged widely since he had engrossed himself in global philosophy, as well as the developing American practical tradition that incorporated sociologists, psychologists and philosophers such as Charles H. Cooley (1864–1929). He drew copiously from these diverse 24 Self, Society and Everyday Life authors to come up with a powerful explanation of the materialization of a sense of self. Since this in itself might sound a bit intimidating, it should be well-known that Mead elaborated his hypothesis of the self in a very understandable style; thus his theory can be put forth without difficulties. In Mind, Self and Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1934 [1974]), printed after his death and developed from notes of his students during lectures, Mead develops an explanation of the social state of the establishment of self. Widely speaking, Mead emphasizes mostly on social self; personally, everyone fashions a sense of our own selfhood in the course of commitment with other selves. Human beings, communicate via symbols as compared to other animals – thus the successive use of the term ‘symbolic interaction’. Symbols symbolize objects in our own minds and in those of others; when we discover in our childhood, to imagine of an object in a symbolic manner –irrespective of if the object is a parent, sibling or doll – we really make the first step on the road to insightful thinking and independent agency. There is therefore a definite harmony to being a self, which means that by looking at our own thoughts, feelings and attitudes; we can read between the lines the actions of others. To have the attitude of another is, in a sense, to identify with the other’s point of view, position or feelings. For instance a death of someone close in the family will bring forth feelings of sadness and empathy, as we try to ‘look at’ our friend’s circumstances by imagining how we might feel. The self for Mead is at once “individuality and generality, agent and recipient, sameness and difference”. Openly put, this means is that the self is the organization via which individuals experience themselves in relation to others Mead explained that for one to possess a ‘self’ then implies the capacity to take one’s actions, emotions and beliefs as a incorporated arrangement, viewed from the point of view of significant others, as others would view and interpret actions of the self. Social communication is organized around such a chatty gestures, as one travels along a biographical course from a introduction or elementary sense of self in early days to an adult identity, one geared to the principles and ethical disposition of culture.Mead makes a vital peculiarity between the ‘I’ and the ‘me’ in conceptualizing the self. The ‘me’ is the socialized self, consisting of the internalized attitudes of others as practiced in the early years of life. Like Simmel, Mead focused on social interaction and individual consciousness. Both theorists believed that humans had an inner consciousness with which one could analyze one’s own actions and the actions of others. Mead’s concept of the generalized other is an expansion of Simmel’s theory that individuals in society are consciously oriented to one another (Ritzer, p.157). The concept of the generalized other states that the attitude of the entire community is directed by the actors’ ability to take on the role of the generalized other. This role is the ability of an individual to evaluate his/herself from the point of views of the generalized other (Ritzer, p.157). Simmel also theorized that it is this same inner consciousness in which deep contradictions between the organic and creative processes of the soul occur (Ritzer, p.156). This internal contradiction is much like the conflict occurring between Mead’s concept of the “I” and “me.” According to Mead the “me” is content in the social world as it is, but the “I” causes opposing ideas from which conflict arises and societal changes erupt. Durkheim on Religion “If religion has brought up all that is essential in society, it is because the plan of society is the soul of religion." (Bellah, 1973, p. 191 [excerpt from The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life]) "For we know today that a religion does not necessarily imply symbols and rites, properly speaking, or temples and priests. This completely exterior apparatus is only the superficial part. Essentially, it is nothing other than a body of collective beliefs and practices endowed with a certain authority." (1973, p. 51 [excerpt from "Individualism and the Intellectuals"]) The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, the last chief work brought forth by Durkheim, five years prior to his death 1917, is generally regarded as his best and most established. Where Suicide paid attention on a huge amount of statistics from changeable sources, The Elementary Forms used one case study in depth, the Australian aborigines. Durkheim chose this group because he felt they represented the most basic, elementary forms of religion within a culture. Durkheim set out accomplish two things; establish the fact that religion was not divinely or supernaturally stimulated. It was in fact a result of society, and he hunted to identify the common things that religion placed a stress upon, as well as what impacts those religious beliefs (the product of social life) had on the lives of all within a society. Durkheim's second principle was in identifying definite elements of religious beliefs that are familiar throughout different cultures. A belief in a paranormal realm is not necessary or common among religions, but the division of different aspects of life, physical things, and certain behaviors into two categories -- the consecrated and the blasphemous is common. Objects and behaviors deemed sacred were considered part of the spiritual or religious realm. They were part of rites, objects of reverence, or simply behaviors deemed special by religious belief. Those things considered profane were everything else in the world that did not have a religious function or hold religious meaning.As these two categories are rigidly defined and set apart, they relate with one another and rely on each other for survival. The sacred world cannot endure to exist without the profane world to sustain it and give it life, and vice versa. In general, those aspects of social life given moral superiority or reverence are considered sacred, and all other aspects are part of the profane. Discuss how Karl Mannhiem's Sociology of Knowledge can be applied to current politics in the United States. The German political sociologist argued that the ideologies for people, combined with their social and political standards and opinion, are inbuilt in their wellbeing, and more widely in the communal and fiscal situation in which they exist: "It is men, who in mounting their substance interaction convert along with this their real survival, their philosophy and the outcome of their thinking. Being is not determined by consciousness, but awareness by being" (Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe 1/5).This knowledge can be applied in US politics in that the political values opinions should be embedded in the community well-being and economic situations but not on the individual prowess and success. Mannheim held fear that this indulgent could be seen to maintain that all facts and values are the outcome of socio-political forces since this form of relativism is self-defeating. Mannheim held that relativism was a strange combination of modern and very old attitude in that it restricted within itself a belief of a complete truth which was right for all times and areas and condemned other truth claims since they could not attain this degree of objectivity . Mannheim tried to solve this problem with the thought of relations’. This is the view that specific things are true only in definite times and places, though, this does not make them less true References Author’s interviews, Financial Action Task Force, Paris, France, October 2007; International Monetary Fund, Washington D.C., February 2010; World Bank, Washington D.C., March 2011. Banerjee, Abhijit, Shawn Cole, Esther Duflo, and Leigh Linden. 2007. “Remedying Education: Evidence from Two Randomized Experiments in India.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 122, 3: 1235–1264. Beacon Hill Institute. 2010. Tenth Annual State Competitiveness Report. Internet, http://www.beaconhill. org/Compete10/Compete2010State.pdf. Accessed 1 March 2011. Belmont Report: Ethical Principles and Guidelines for the Protection of Human Subjects Research. 1979. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Online at: http://ohsr.od.nih.gov/guidelines/ belmont.html. Bertrand, Marianne, and Sendhil Mullainathan. 2004. “Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination.”American Economic Review 94, no. 4: 991-1013. Blackwell, Matthew, Stefano Iacus, Gary King, and Giuseppe Poro. 2009. “cem: Coarsened Exact Matching in Stata.”The Stata Journal 9, no. 4: 524-546. Read More