Friday, November 27, 2009

Share of workforce in financial services in tax havens

The Mapping the Faultlines project has a new report looking at the share of each secrecy jurisdiction's workforce working in financial services. As the report notes:

A high proportion of people working in financial services in the overall economic activity of a country is likely to indicate the existence of considerable political influence by the financial services industry on the government of the jurisdiction. . . . the more reliant a territory is upon a particular economic activity the more deferential it is likely to be to the demands of that sector. Such influence can undermine democratic decision making processes, can facilitate corruption, in the case of financial services can create a strong orientation towards the needs of those outside the territory who would not normally be the prime concern of its government, and can be (but we stress, is not always) conducive to a criminogenic environment.

NB due to an absence of cross-country comparable data, several jurisdictions, notably the United States, are not part of this survey. See more here.

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