[1] Transparency International (TI) is a non-governmental organization that monitors and publicizes corporate and political corruption in international development. Originally founded in Germany in May 1993 as a not- for-profit organization, Transparency International is now an international non-governmental organization. It publishes an annual Global Corruption Barometer and Corruption Perceptions Index, a comparative listing of corruption worldwide. The headquarters are located in Berlin, Germany. According to the 2014 Global Go To Think Tank Index Report (Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program, University of Pennsylvania), TI is number 5 (of 100) in the ”Top Think Tanks Worldwide (non-U.S).” and number 13 (of 150) in the ”Top Think Tanks Worldwide (U.S. and non-U.S).”. The organization defines corruption as the abuse of entrusted power for private gain which eventually hurts everyone who depends on the integrity of people in a position of authority. The Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) is a quantitative diagnostic tool for measuring levels of transparency and corruption, both at global and local levels. It ranks more than 150 countries in terms of perceived levels of corruption, as determined by expert assessments and opinion surveys.
[2] The World Justice Project (WJP) Rule of Law Index provides data on how the rule of law is experienced by the general public in 102 countries around the globe. The WJP Rule of Law Index 2015 relies on over 100,000 household and 2,400 expert surveys to measure how the rule of law is experienced in practical, everyday situations by ordinary people around the world. Performance is assessed using 44 indicators across 8 categories, each of which is scored and ranked globally and against regional and income peers: Constraints on Government Powers, Absence of Corruption, Open Government, Fundamental Rights, Order and Security, Regulatory Enforcement, Civil Justice, and Criminal Justice. The Index’s scores are built from the assessments of local residents (1,000 respondents per country) and local legal experts, ensuring that the findings reflect the conditions experienced by the population, including marginalized sectors of society.
[3] The World Economic Forum (WEF) is a Swiss nonprofit foundation, based in Geneva. It describes itself as an independent international organization committed to improving the state of the world by engaging business, political, academic, and other leaders of society to shape global, regional, and industry agendas. The forum is best known for its annual winter meeting in Davos. The Global Competitiveness Report’s main competitiveness ranking is the Global Competitiveness Index (GCI), developed for the World Economic Forum by Sala-i-Martin and originally introduced in 2004. The GCI is based on 12 pillars of competitiveness, providing a comprehensive picture of the competitiveness landscape in countries around the world at all stages of development. The pillars include: Institutions, Infrastructure, Macroeconomic Stability, Health and Primary Education, Higher Education and Training, Goods Market Efficiency, Labour Market Efficiency, Financial Market Sophistication, Technological Readiness, Market Size, Business Sophistication and Innovation.
[4] The Environmental Sustainability Index (ESI) is a composite index tracking 21 elements of environmental sustainability covering natural resource endowments, past and present pollution levels, environmental management efforts, contributions to protection of the global commons, and a society’s capacity to improve its environmental performance over time. The ESI is published by Yale University’s Center for Environmental Law and Policy in collaboration with Columbia University’s Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), and the World Economic Forum.
[5] The Fund for Peace is a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit, non-governmental research and educational institution. Founded in 1957, FFP ”works to prevent violent conflict and promote sustainable security.” The Fund for Peace works towards sustainable security and development in failed states by focusing on conflict assessment and early warning, transnational threats, peacekeeping, and security and human rights. FFP publishes the annual Fragile States Index. The index’s ranks are based on twelve indicators of state vulnerability – four social, two economic and six political. The indicators are meant to measure a state’s vulnerability to collapse or conflict.
[6] The Human Freedom Index is an index of civil liberties published by Canada’s Fraser Institute, Germany’s Liberales Institut, and the U.S. Cato Institute. The index is based on measures of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, individual economic choice, freedom of association, freedom of assembly, violence and crimes, freedom of movement, LGBT rights and women’s rights. Other components of the Freedom Index include human trafficking, sexual violence, female genital mutilation, homicide, freedom of movement, and adoption by homosexuals.
[7] The Martin Prosperity Institute (MPI) is the world’s leading think-tank on the role of sub-national factors (location, place, and city-regions) in global economic prosperity. It takes an integrated view of prosperity, looking beyond traditional economic measures to include the importance of quality of place and the development of people’s creative potential. The Global Creativity Index (GCI) assesses the prospects for sustainable prosperity across 82 nations according to a combination of underlying economic, social, and cultural factors that we refer to as the “3 Ts” of economic development; Technology, Talent, and Tolerance. It also compares the GCI to a series of other metrics of competitiveness and prosperity—from conventional measures of economic growth to alternative measures of economic equality, human development, and happiness and well-being.
[8] Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine founded in 1933. Its print edition is available in English in the United States, Pakistan, Europe, Middle East and Africa. In Newsweek’s first-ever Best Countries special issue, it set out to answer a question that is at once simple and incredibly complex—if you were born today, which country would provide you the very best opportunity to live a healthy, safe, reasonably prosperous, and upwardly mobile life? Many organizations measure various aspects of national competitiveness. But none attempt to put them all together. For this special survey, then, Newsweek chose five categories of national well-being—education, health, quality of life, economic competitiveness, and political environment—and compiled metrics within these categories across 100 nations. A weighted formula yielded an overall list of the world’s top 100 countries. The effort took several months, during which it received copious aid from an advisory board that included Nobel laureate and Columbia University professor Joseph E. Stiglitz; McKinsey & Co. Social Sector Office director Byron Auguste; McKinsey Global Institute director James Manyika; Jody Heymann, the founding director of McGill University’s Institute for Health and Social Policy and a professor at the university; and Geng Xiao, director of Columbia’s Global Center for East Asia.
[9] The Economist Intelligence Unit business environment rankings model measures the quality or attractiveness of the business environment in the 82 countries (previously 60) covered by Country Forecasts using a standard analytical framework. It is designed to reflect the main criteria used by companies to formulate their global business strategies, and is based not only on historical conditions but also on expectations about conditions prevailing over the next five years.
[10] The Economist Intelligence Unit Innovation Index is a measure of the adoption of new technology, and the interaction between the business and science sectors. It includes measures of the investment into research institutions and protection of intellectual property rights.
[11] The Economist Intelligence Unit Global Peace index is composed of 24 qualitative and quantitative indicators, which combine internal and external factors ranging from a nation’s level of military expenditure to its relations with neighbouring countries and the level of respect for human rights. These indicators were selected by an international panel of academics, business people, philanthropists and peace institutions. The GPI is collated and calculated by the Economist Intelligence Unit.
[12] The Economist Intelligence Unit’s democracy index is based on five categories: electoral process and pluralism; civil liberties; the functioning of government; political participation; and political culture. The five categories are inter-related and form a coherent conceptual whole. The condition of having free and fair competitive elections, and satisfying related aspects of political freedom, is clearly the sine quo none of all definitions.
[13] The Economist Intelligence Unit Corruption Perceptions Index ranks countries based on how much corruption is perceived by business people, academics and risk analysts to exist among politicians and public officials.
[14] The Economist Intelligence Unit Political Instability Index shows the level of threat posed to governments by social protest. The index scores are derived by combining measures of economic distress and underlying vulnerability to unrest. The index covers the period 2009/10, and scores are compared with results for 2007. The index draws on recent insights of the political science literature that seeks to identify and quantify the main social, economic and political factors and traits that are causally associated with, or that can predict, political instability. In particular, it draws on the work of the so-called Political Instability Task Force (PITF) based at George Mason University in the US. The PITF has created a simple model that has a rate of success of over 80% in identifying, ex post, outbreaks of serious instability for a data set that stretches back to 1955.
[15] The Economist Intelligence Unit Operational risk rating rates operational risk in 150 markets on a scale of 0-100. The overall scores are an aggregate of underlying scores for ten categories of risk: security; political stability; government effectiveness; legal and regulatory; macroeconomic; foreign trade and payments; financial; tax policy; labour market; and infrastructure.
[16] The Economist Intelligence Unit Country credit Risk Ratings Review is a comparative summary of credit risk ratings for countries monitored by the Economist Intelligence Unit Country Risk Service.
