The Legatum Prosperity Index and non-cooperative tax jurisdictions (2021)

Abstract

This paper aims to establish what are the differences in The Legatum Prosperity Index between 15 non-cooperative tax jurisdictions and the rest of the countries in their geographic regions? Our data were 149,739 records (from 2021) out of the 2,165,925 (2007-2021) available from the Legatum index. We used the Friedman test to verify the significance of the differences. We found that except for Angola and Yemen, the rest of the non-cooperative tax jurisdictions (Bahrain, Cabo Verde, Guyana, Hong Kong, Kuwait, Lebanon, Liberia, Mauritius, Oman, Qatar, Seychelles, Trinidad and Tobago, Singapore) performed better on the Prosperity Legatum index than the countries of the region. Analyzing specifically the tax havens with the best performance in the index, we identify that Singapore achieves a better performance in all 12 pillars, while Hong Kong has a worse performance only in "social capital". All this in comparison to the rest of the countries in the Asia Pacific region. This study opens the door to future works related to the reasons why 13 of the 15 non-cooperative tax jurisdictions perform better on the indicators and elements that make up each of the 12 pillars of prosperity.