The idea that economic institutions are determinants of long-run economic performance is largely associated with the work of Douglass North and several other economists in the post-War period. Although the importance of institutions has been recognized by many authors since at least Adam Smith (1776), much of post-War economics research ignored the importance of institutions for economic growth...

Foreign aid has often been intended by donors to entice recipient nations into policy and institutional reforms favorable to private sector economic development. In this study, we investigate the relationship between aid and changes to economic freedom in recipient nations over the 1990–2000 decade. The evidence is mixed. In general, we find that foreign aid has no significant effect on economi...

This note projects forward into the distant future number of countries existing under regimes different levels economic liberalism by deriving a transition probability matrix from Economic Freedom World data. Naively extrapolating trends 1970-2020 suggests modest majority 165 will be economically free in long-run steady state, with results driven improvements variables associated freedom to tra...

Recent studies have investigated the relationship between a country’s overall measure of economic freedom and its economic performance over time. On the one hand, institutions promoting economic freedoms are thought to increase productivity (Dawson 1998) and investment opportunities (Besley 1995). However, while economic freedom may be certainly desirable from a normative perspective, De Hann a...

The paper presents, by means of a structural equations model, an account of the economic freedom factors and their importance. Considering that economic freedom manifests through: business freedom, trade freedom, fiscal freedom, government size, monetary freedom, investment freedom, financial freedom, property rights, freedom from corruption and labour freedom. Results show that all the conside...

This study of the impact of economic freedom on per capita real GDP among OECD nations over the 2002-2006 period, with each OECD nation during this time frame being treated as a de facto “economic region” within the OECD, finds strong initial support for the hypothesis proffered here, namely, the higher the degree of economic freedom, the higher the level of economic activity and hence the high...

This paper surveys recent evidence suggesting that market-oriented institutions and policies are strongly related to economic growth, focusing on studies using the economic freedom indicator of the Fraser Institute. This index is critically discussed. Also various serious shortcomings of empirical studies using this index are identified. Nevertheless there are strong indications that liberaliza...