The book “Money laundering phenomenon – foundations, trends, impact and governance in banking industry” explores foundation, models (methods) to measure money laundering, trends, auditing Anti-Money Laundering structures in banking industry, AML risk assessment, impact/effects of money laundering, governance, and regulatory point of view.

The book includes some models that have been used to measure the amount of money laundering, respectively the effect of money laundering in various macroeconomic variables such as economic growth, consumption, investment, government expenditure, export and import. Moreover, there are presented some trends that may dominate in the AML field for coming years.

The strengthening of international cooperation in the field of anti-money laundering have given power to international organisations to recommend mitigating measures, standards and principles and applying them in practise, this is why in the book a special chapter is dedicated to international bodies and organisations to fight money laundering phenomenon.

Due to high importance of the AML risk assessment, as a risk management mechanism framework, a specific chapter is dedicated to it.

A special attention is dedicated to the auditing of AML structures in banking and the role of audit in general to AML field.

Last, but not least, in the book a chapter is dedicated to determinants of informal economy, since money laundering and informal economy are interconnected and needs to be studied as one of the challenges for countries.

We believe our book contributes to current literature on money laundering phenomena and that it is important for bankers, policy makers, strategists, academics, and students.

Globalization and related technological developments have increased competition and put organizations in a struggle to survive in an extremely difficult market condition. Organizations adopt their technologies and infrastructures to today’s conditions to gain a sustainable competitive advantage and maintain their existence. However, all these efforts of organizations are easily imitated by rival companies and may cause the loss of competitive advantage.

The resource-based view provides additional information that strategic human resource is the scarce, valuable, inimitable and non-substitutable resources of organizations, thus enabling them to gain a competitive advantage. According to this view, the competitive advantage of the organization is achieved by combining valuable internal resources. Nowadays, sustainable competitive advantage is provided not by environmental factors or physical capital but by human capital (employees) efficiency. In this context, the attitudes and behaviors of employees who make up human resources are important for their organizational success. Many studies emphasize that positive attitudes and behaviors (e.g. innovative work behavior, work engagement, job satisfaction) in employees have important contributions to the success of the organization, while similarly negative attitudes and behaviors (e.g. organizational silence, turnover intention) are one of the main reasons for the failure of the organization.

In our book, literature has been created on the definition, antecedents, and organizational results of new and current concepts that are newly conceptualized in the literature and are still in their infancy. It is considered that this cumulative literature within the book will be a source for future studies on these subjects and will provide important insights for practitioners.

Adam Smith, with “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations” published in 1776 is unanimously hailed as the founder of economics as a social science and also of “economic liberalism” or “capitalism” as it is called to contrast it with “socialism”, the latter propagated by K. Marx at a later date.

The group of economists that followed A.Smith, including such notable names as D.Ricardo, N.W.Senior, John Stuart Mill, culminating in Alfred Marshall (1890: Principles of Economics) is called the “Classical School” or alternately the “Manchester School” to refer to their place of origin. Their macroeconomic system is called the “Classical System”. Having accepted the Malthusian law of population (T.Robert Malthus: 1798 Essays on the Principle of Population) D. Ricardo had come up with a model in which growth eventually comes to a halt, moving to that point, however, all along at full employment equilibrium.This was also in line with the views of Adam Smith. Marshall had introduced the concept of elasticities and used the partial method of analysis. In contrast, Leon Walras, in his “Eléments d’Economie Pure ou Theorie de La Richesse Sociale” used the general equilibrium approach to prove that the economy arrives automatically to full employment equilibrium, following Adam Smith and the Classical School.

This book offers a summary of the basic views and conclusions of Adam Smith concerning economic regime, as is also followed by the rest of the members of the Classical School: In a milieu of perfect competition prevailing in all the markets or sectors of the economy, including the labor market, full employment equilibrium will be achieved automatically. This equilibrium will, therefore, also maximize the welfare of the workers because the market wage rate, with no intrusions from the government or the unions, will have ensured full employment. Hence, there is no need for interventionism, that is, for the state to intervene prices, wages, channeling of investments and economic decisions in general.