External Speaker: Prof. Jason SHARMAN (Professor, Griffith University & LSE)

The presentation will compare parallel global field and survey experiments testing the availability of anonymous shell corporations, which are commonly used to hide money laundering, tax evasion, and corruption.

First, a large field experiment was performed using aliases and deception in asking for confidential incorporation from nearly 4,000 corporate service providers (CSPs) in more than 180 countries. Second, a survey experiment was conducted based on informed consent from the same CSPs, using substantively similar treatment conditions as the subjects received in the field study.

It turns out that the experimental method chosen strongly affects the substantive results obtained, for two reasons. First, field and survey experiments may select systematically different samples from the same population. Second, individuals’ actual behaviour in a given situation may be radically different from their survey responses about hypothetical behaviour in that same situation.