I. INTRODUCTION AND HISTORICAL BACKGROUND The Economic Freedom of the World (EFW) index was first produced by Gwartney. Block, and Lawson (1996) and has been updated annually since. (1) The EFW index has found a place as one of the top resources for academics. policy makers, and journalists who are looking for indicators on national economic policies around the world. Academically, the EFW index has been cited in hundreds of articles. Many. but not all, of these articles have a strong economic policy component to them and thus should be of interest to the readers of this journal. Here, we provide an accounting and description of this literature. The EFW index is designed to measure the consistency of a nation's policies and institutions with economic freedom. The EFW index places the concept of economic freedom within the classical liberal tradition that emphasizes the importance of private property, rule of law, free trade, sound money, and a limited role for government. Higher scores are accorded to nations with more secure property, freer trade, more stable money and prices, less government spending, and fewer regulations. The EFW index was conceived as a result of a 1984 Mont Pelerin Society meeting session in which George Orwell's book, 1984, was being discussed. (2) The question of the session was whether Orwell's dystopic depiction of the future had come true. Some discussants at the meeting thought Orwell was clearly wrong as democracy and human rights were well protected, at least in the Western nations that concerned Orwell. Others, most notably Michael Walker, the founder and then-Executive Director of Canada's Fraser Institute, countered that while that might be true of political and civil liberties, economic liberties are under increasing attack. According to Walker, economic life was becoming increasingly Orwellian. Further, he argued even our political and civil liberties were not out of the woods just yet. Walker quoted Milton Friedman, who wrote in Capitalism and Freedom (1962, p. 9): Historical evidence speaks with a single voice on the relation between political freedom and a free market. I know of no example in time or place of a society that has been marked by a large measure of political freedom, and that has not also used something comparable to a free market to organize the bulk of economic activity. Among the participants at this meeting was Milton Friedman himself, who noted that the debate on the floor about whether economic freedom was growing or eroding suffered from a critical lack of empirical data. The debaters employed little more than isolated anecdotes to make their points. As a result of this experience. Walker and Rose and Milton Friedman organized a meeting sponsored by Liberty Fund to discuss the prospects for creating some kind of measure of economic freedom. This first meeting ultimately led to a series of six meetings. The participants at these early meetings included a veritable Who's Who of classical-liberal scholars including Armen Alchian, Peter Bauer, Gary Becker, Arthur Denzau, Stephen Easton, David Friedman, John Goodman. Herb Grubel, Ronald Jones, Richard Rahn, Henri LePage, Henry Manne. Charles Murray, and Douglass North. At the fourth conference, held in Sea Ranch, California, Gwartney, Block, and Lawson (1992) presented a prototype index for 79 countries. The organizers briefly pursued the idea of doing a survey-based economic freedom index, but that effort failed, and they eventually asked Gwartney, Block, and Lawson to complete a publishable index. The index was finally released in 1996, 10 years after the original conference, as Economic Freedom of the World: 1975-1995. (3) Milton Friedman's "Foreword" in the first volume is worth reprinting here: Freedom is a big word, and economic freedom not much smaller. To talk about economic freedom is easy; to measure it, to make fine distinctions, assign numbers to its attributes. …

Economic freedom of the world: an accounting of the literature

THE UNBOUND PROMETHEUS: Technological Change and Industrial Development in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present

There are several theoretical reasons why globalization will have a narrowing as well as widening effect on the gender wage gap, but little is known about the actual impact, except for a number of country studies. The author provides a cross-country study of the impact of globalization on the occupational gender wage gap, based on the rarely used but most far-ranging survey of wages around the world, the International Labour Organization's October Inquiry. This annual survey was started in 1924 and contains a wealth of information on wages and the gender wage gap. For the period 1983-99, there is information on the gender wage gap in 161 narrowly defined occupations in more than 80 countries around the world. The author finds the following: (i) The occupational gender wage gap appears to be narrowing with increases inGDP per capita; (ii) There is a significantly narrowing impact of trade and foreign direct investment (FDI) net inflows on the occupational gender wage gap for low-skill occupations, both in poorer and richer countries, and for high-skill occupations in richer countries; (iii) There is no evidence of a narrowing impact of trade, but there is evidence of a widening impact of FDI net inflows on the high-skill occupational gender wage gap in poorer countries; (iv) Wage-setting institutions have a strong impact on the occupational gender wage gap in richer countries.

Globalization and the gender wage gap

Thank you for reading the gifts of athena historical origins of the knowledge economy. As you may know, people have look hundreds times for their favorite readings like this the gifts of athena historical origins of the knowledge economy, but end up in infectious downloads. Rather than enjoying a good book with a cup of tea in the afternoon, instead they juggled with some harmful virus inside their laptop.

The Gifts Of Athena Historical Origins Of The Knowledge Economy

A long tradition in economics explores the association between the quality of formal institutions and economic performance. The literature on the relationship between such institutions and happiness is, however, rather limited. In this paper, we revisit the findings from recent cross-country studies on the institutions-happiness association. Our findings suggest that the conclusions reached by previous studies are fairly sensitive to the specific measure of ‘happiness’ used. In addition, the results indicate that the welfare effects of policies may differ across phases of a country’s economic development. This bears important policy implications which we discuss in the concluding section of the paper.

Formal Institutions and Subjective Well-Being: Revisiting the Cross-Country Evidence

We examine a panel of 70 countries during 1966-2010 and utilize Reinhart and Rogoff crisis dates to estimate the effects of crises on the size and scope of government over both 5-year and 10-year horizons. We also estimate cross-section regressions using 40-year (1970-2010) changes in government variables. In general, the estimated effects of crises on government size/scope are statistically insignificant. We report reasonably robust evidence that inflation and currency crises lead to decreases in the extent of government regulations throughout an economy over a 10-year horizon. Also, over the 40-year period, countries that spent more years in crisis are associated with weaker legal systems and property rights. The size and scope of government appears to be persistent to the extent that even crisis episodes fail to leave a significant mark upon them. A notable exception may be that, over 40-year periods, countries that spend more years in crisis are associated with weaker legal systems and property rights.

/pdf/crises-and-government-some-empirical-evidence-3ksik7yujc.pdf

Crises and Government: Some Empirical Evidence

The 1918 flu pandemic constituted an exogenous shock on economic activity In this paper, we condition the economic importance of these shocks on the level of economic freedom measured by the Historical Index of Economic Liberty project to test whether freer economies fared better Our argument is that higher levels of economic freedom meant a greater ability to adjust to shocks by reducing frictions in the reallocation of resources and the reorganization of economic activity We find that higher levels of economic freedom mitigated the pandemic's effect We link this finding with the literature on economic freedom and crises (JEL I15, N10, N30)

Economic freedom and the economic consequences of the 1918 pandemic

We use the Stansel (2013) metropolitan area economic freedom index and 25 conditioning variables to analyze the spatial relationships between institutional quality and economic outcomes across 381 U.S. metropolitan areas. Specifically, we allow for spatial dependence in both the dependent and independent variables and estimate how economic freedom impacts both per-capita income growth and per-capita income levels. We find that while economic freedom and income levels are directly and positively related, increases in economic freedom in one area result in negative indirect effects on income levels in surrounding areas. In addition, we find that economic freedom has an insignificant relationship with economic growth.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID2414534_code415523.pdf?abstractid=2414534&mirid=1&type=2

A Spatial Analysis of Incomes and Institutional Quality: Evidence from US Metropolitan Areas

Do immigrants undermine culture in a way that destroys productivity in destination countries? Some scholars have argued that because immigrants come from countries with dysfunctional social capital—norms and institutions—they will import it and pollute the social capital in destination countries. One potential channel through which this could occur is corruption. We examine stocks and flows of immigrants over a 20‐year time period to see if corruption increased in destination countries. We generally find that immigration is not associated with increases in corruption. Additionally, we find that immigration tends to decrease corruption in destination countries with low levels of corruption or high levels of economic freedom.

Cultural Baggage: Do Immigrants Import Corruption?

This paper uses the Stansel (2013) economic freedom index for a maximum of 375 U.S. metropolitan areas to estimate the effect of economic freedom on entrepreneurship while controlling for spatial dependence. This paper finds positive and statistically significant evidence that increases in economic freedom in one area result in increases in entrepreneurial activity in neighboring areas. Furthermore, the total (direct plus indirect) effects of an increase in economic freedom on entrepreneurship are positive and statistically significant, indicating that a positive-sum game is present. However, these effects are small in magnitude. In order to explain a cumulative one standard deviation increase in either one of the entrepreneurial measures presented in this paper, there would have to be an increase in the freedom index equivalent to moving from the least free area to the most free area.

/pdf/a-spatial-analysis-of-entrepreneurship-and-institutional-1upcitr146.pdf

Jamie Bologna Pavlik

Papers

Crises and Government: Some Empirical Evidence

Economic freedom and the economic consequences of the 1918 pandemic

A Spatial Analysis of Incomes and Institutional Quality: Evidence from US Metropolitan Areas

Cultural Baggage: Do Immigrants Import Corruption?

A Spatial Analysis of Entrepreneurship and Institutional Quality: Evidence from U.S. Metropolitan Areas