The Financial Secrecy Index: An Information Theory Approach

Galuszka, Lukáš

The objective of this thesis is to evaluate alternative weighting systems to determine if they have the potential to improve the current weighting system of the Financial Secrecy Index (FSI). The FSI, a measure of countries' contributions to global financial secrecy, currently weights its 15 qualitative components equally. A web-based opinion survey conducted in January and February 2016 among academics, journalists, experts and other persons familiar with FSI serves as the baseline for assessing new weights. The new weights derived from the survey results are not significantly different from the equal weights in 14 out of 15 components. The survey results suggest that widely held opinion is consistent with equal weight assumptions. Statistical model selection criteria from information theory that penalize model complexity prefer in majority of cases the simple model over the more complex one even though more complex model provides better goodness-of-fit statistics. Alternative methods and analysis such as Principal Components Analysis is performed and discussed. The present work finds that, statistically, the weights should not diverge from the equal weighting system in use currently. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

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