Measuring Economic Freedom: Better Without Size of Government

Measuring Economic Freedom: Better Without Size of Government

The Heritage Foundation and the Fraser Institute measure economic freedom in nations using indices with ten and five indicators respectively. Eight of the Heritage indicators and four of the Fraser-indicators are about specific types of institutional quality, like rule of law, the protection of property, and the provision of sound money. More of these is considered to denote more economic freed...

Government size and growth: accounting for economic freedom and globalization

We examine the relationship between government size and economic growth, controlling for economic freedom and globalization, and using Bayesian Averaging over Classical Estimates in a panel of rich countries. Countries with big government have experienced above average increases in the KOF globalization index and in the Fraser institute’s Economic freedom index. To maintain comparability with e...

Government Size Threshold and Economic Growth in Iran

We apply the two-sector production function developed by Ram (1986) to estimate the threshold regression model for Iran, concerning the effect of government size on economic growth. Three government size indicators are used to find out the different threshold points. The results show a non-linear relationship of the Armey curve in Iran, in which the threshold effects corresponding to total gove...

Economic Freedom and Government Ideology Across the German States

This paper examines whether government ideology influenced economic freedom across the German states. The results show that in former West Germany rightwing governments promoted economic freedom, whereas leftwing governments confined it. In former East Germany, however, rightwing governments have not been associated with propagating economic freedom. This finding appears to conflict with the co...

Antidote to Poverty: Economic Freedom, Not Government Dependency