Corruption Perception Index 2017

The Corruption Perception Index (hosted by Transparency International), ranks 180 countries and territories by their perceived levels of public sector corruption according to experts and business people, uses a scale of 0 to 100, where 0 is highly corrupt and 100 is very clean. 

This year, New Zealand and Denmark rank highest with scores of 89 and 88 respectively. Syria, South Sudan and Somalia rank lowest with scores of 14, 12 and 9 respectively. The best performing region is Western Europe with an average score of 66. The worst performing regions are Sub-Saharan Africa (average score 32) and Eastern Europe and Central Asia (average score 34).  More than two-thirds of countries score below 50, with an average score of 43. Unfortunately, compared to recent years, this poor performance is nothing new. 

Those that significantly reduced corruption are Belarus (+13), Greece (+12), South Sudan (+12), Guyana (+10), Latvia (+9), Senegal (+9), North Korea (+9), United Kingdom (+8), Seychelles (+8), Czech Republic (+8), Italy (+8) and Laos (+8). Of those, most countries were starting with a low base, so improvement wasn't difficult in most cases. Three stand-outs were the United Kingdom (now equal 8th), Latvia (now 40th) and the Czech Republic (now 57th), which are now among the 30 percent of countries in the world that score better than 5/10.

World's Most Miserable Economies

The Bloomberg Misery Index relies on the age-old concept that low inflation and unemployment generally illustrate how good an economy’s residents should feel. Sometimes, of course, a low tally can be misleading in either category: Persistently low prices can be a sign of poor demand, and too-low joblessness shackles workers who want to switch to better jobs, for instance.

 

Venezuela marks its fourth year as the world’s most miserable economy, with a score that’s more than three times what it was in 2017. Thailand again claimed “least miserable” status, though the nation’s unique way of calculating unemployment makes No. 2 Singapore worth noting. Elsewhere, Mexico looks to make big strides this year as inflation becomes more manageable, while Romania absorbs more misery for the opposite reason.

 

Mexico makes the biggest progress this year, moving 16 notches toward “least miserable” as economists remain optimistic that the central bank will be able to tame last year’s bout of high inflation, bringing it to an average 4.1 percent this year after 6 percent in 2017. Unemployment is set to remain around 3.4 percent.

Malaysia moves down the misery scale to No. 52 from No. 43 due to moderating inflation. The tepid price growth is allowing Bank Negara Malaysia to be patient with interest-rate hikes, even as they were first in the region this year to tighten this year.

Argentina, ranked at No. 3, belies a third year of improvement in its overall score, set to be the lowest since at least 2013, the year in which the IMF censured the country for covering up high inflation and when Bloomberg began calculating the data.

Saudi Arabia, projected to make the biggest plunge from 2017 in its misery index number, climbs into the top 10 most-miserable economies.

China, the world’s second-largest economy, saw its misery score rise to 6.3 this year from 5.5 in 2017. Consumer prices are estimated to rise 2.3 percent this year, compared with 1.6 percent in 2017,

World Financial Secrecy Index 2018

The Financial Secrecy Index ranks jurisdictions according to their secrecy and the scale of their offshore financial activities.  A politically neutral ranking, it is a tool for understanding global financial secrecy, tax havens or secrecy jurisdictions, and illicit financial flows or capital flight. Some of the criteria used to build the index include the absence of a public register, harmful tax residency rules and whether the system allows for bearer shares, which obscure ownership.

An estimated $21 to $32 trillion of private financial wealth is located, untaxed or lightly taxed, in secrecy jurisdictions around the world. Secrecy jurisdictions - a term we often use as an alternative to the more widely used term tax havens - use secrecy to attract illicit and illegitimate or abusive financial flows.

Switzerland and the United States are the biggest promoters of financial secrecy according to the Tax Justice Network (TJN). Cayman Islands, Hong Kong, Singapore, Luxembourg, Germany, Taiwan, the UAE and Guernsey rounded out the list’s top ten. 

The Financial Secrecy Index reveals that traditional stereotypes of tax havens are misconceived. The world’s most important providers of financial secrecy harboring looted assets are mostly not small, palm-fringed islands as many suppose, but some of the world’s biggest and wealthiest countries. Rich OECD member countries and their satellites are the main recipients of or conduits for these illicit flows.

Global Shift in Wealth

The world has now accumulated $215 trillion in private wealth, a 12% increase over 2017, according to the latest report by market research company New World Wealth. This number today includes wealth held by the general population, as well as the 15.2M millionaires ($1M+ in assets), 584,000 multi-millionaires ($10M+ in assets), and 2,252 billionaires ($1B+ in assets) in the world.

Top Countries Adding Wealth

Over the last decade, from 2007 to 2017, here are the top countries based on percentage of new wealth added (in USD terms):

Rank	Country	Wealth Growth (2007-2017)
#1	Vietnam	210%
#2	China	198%
#3	Mauritius	195%
#4	Ethiopia	190%
#5	India	160%
#6	Sri Lanka	133%
#7	Panama	125%
#8	Uruguay	117%
#9	Malta	95%
#10	Indonesia	92%

Global Democracy Index 2017

Global democracy has declined significantly over the last year, according to the latest edition of the Democracy Index. The Democracy Index provides a snapshot of the current state of democracy worldwide. The Index is based on five categories: electoral process and pluralism; civil liberties; the functioning of government; political participation; and political culture. Based on their scores on 60 indicators within these categories, each country is then itself classified as one of four types of regime: full democracy; flawed democracy; hybrid regime; and authoritarian regime.

In the 2017 Democracy Index the average global score fell from 5.52 in 2016 to 5.48 (on a scale of 0 to 10). Some 89 countries experienced a decline in their total score compared with 2016, more than three times as many as the countries that recorded an improvement (27), the worst performance since 2010-11 in the aftermath of the global economic and financial crisis. The other 51 countries stagnated, as their scores remained unchanged compared with 2016. 

Norway once again tops the Democracy Index global ranking in 2017. The Nordics occupy the top three spots, with Iceland and Sweden taking second and third place. New Zealand comes in fourth place and Denmark in fifth. Finland is not far behind, in ninth place with a total score above 9. At the other end of the rankings North Korea, with a total score of 1.08, remains firmly ensconced in last place. Syria, Chad, the Central African Republic (CAR) and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) also bring up the rear, occupying the four slotsabove North Korea. The scores for Syria and Chad did not change in 2017 compared with 2016, but the scores for CAR and the DRC both declined in 2017.