ABSTRACT
The terrorism risk has impacted the evolution of the international financial markets and their regulation. The initial summations dwelled on the painful observation of the costly tribute paid in human lives and on the unknowns linked to the possible crumbling of trust in the normal course of economic and financial activities. The banking and financial industry is physiologically vulnerable to the risk of becoming an instrument at the service of terrorist and criminal organizations, because of the accentuated phenomenon of information asymmetries. The advocates of tax harmonization stress that the individual and collective advantages of perfect competition can be exalted only by those who conceal the 'market failures' that characterize the real functioning of the markets, national and international. Economic benefit and political legitimacy are the pillars on which to build rules for governing international capital flows that observe the cardinal principles for the proper functioning of a market economy: efficiency and integrity.
