The world’s freest economies are Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand, Bahrain, Luxembourg and United States. Neighbouring Estonia ranked 22, Latvia, 44, and Poland, 53.
The central finding of the latest index is that countries with the most economic freedom have higher rates of long-term economic growth and prosperity than those with less economic freedom.
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The 2000 edition of the index contains good news. More countries (54) expanded economic freedom during the past year than curtailed it (34).
Another finding of the index is that democracy alone does not bring prosperity and that countries operating under a strong tradition of Anglo-American capitalism, with its emphasis on a well-functioning legal system and secure property rights, tend to outperform countries with electoral freedom but no rule of law.
This edition measures how well 131 countries score on a list of 10 broad factors of economic freedom: trade policy; fiscal burden of government; government intervention in the economy; monetary policy; capital flows and foreign investment; banking; wages and prices; property rights; regulation;
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and black market.
