The data file available there contains the most up-to-date and accurate data for the Economic Freedom of the World index. Title: 2016 Economic Freedom Dataset, published in Economic Freedom of the World: 2016 Annual Report Publisher: Fraser Institute. Authors: James Gwartney, Robert Lawson and Joshua Hall Title: World Economic Freedom: Annual Report 2016 Publisher: Fraser Institute.
See page 317 for a list of all volumes of Economic Freedom of the World and associated publications. The index published in Economic Freedom of the World measures the extent to which countries' policies and institutions support economic freedom. 3 The most recent data available for calculating the index in the 2016 edition of Economic Freedom of the World is from 2014.
In each chapter, the authors explain the causes and results of changes in economic freedom. While the decline in the economic freedom of the United States has been moderate compared to that of Venezuela, the decline has nevertheless been significant.
Economic Freedom of the World in 2014
The Economic Freedom of the World index for 2014
- Size of Government
- Government consumption B. Transfers and subsidies
- Government enterprises and investment
- Top marginal tax rate
- Legal System and Property Rights
- Judicial independence B. Impartial courts
- Protection of property rights
- Military interference in rule of law and politics E. Integrity of the legal system
- Legal enforcement of contracts
- Regulatory costs of the sale of real property H. Reliability of police
- Business costs of crime
- Money growth
- Standard deviation of inflation
- Inflation: most recent year
- Freedom to own foreign currency bank accounts
- Freedom to Trade Internationally
- Tariffs
- Black-market exchange rates
- Controls of the movement of capital and people (i) Foreign ownership / investment restrictions
- Regulation
- Credit market regulations (i) Ownership of banks
- Business regulations
The construction of the index published in Economic Freedom of the World is based on three important methodological principles. Importantly, the value judgments of the authors or others in the Economic Freedom Network are never used to change the raw data or assessment of any country. The entire data set used in building the index is freely available to researchers at www.freetheworld.com.
The component ratings within each area are then averaged to derive ratings for each of the five areas. Government consumption as a share of total consumption (1A) and transfers and subsidies as a share of GDP (1B) are indicators of the size of government. When government consumption is a larger part of the total, personal choice is replaced by political choice.
Capital and People Flow Controls (i) Foreign Ownership/Investment Restrictions (i) Foreign Ownership/Investment Restrictions (ii) Capital Controls. iii) freedom of visits by foreigners. The fifth area of the index focuses on regulatory constraints that limit the freedom of exchange in credit, labor and product markets.
Summary Economic Freedom Ratings for 2014
Area Economic Freedom Ratings (and Rankings) for 2014
5A Credit market
Areas Components of Area 5 Size of 1
The Chain-Linked Summary Index
Economic freedom, poverty, and convergence—
As this data shows, the growth rate of GDP per capita of the high-income group has slowed, while the growth rate of developing economies has increased. During this latter period, the annual growth rate of 5.3% of GDP per capita of developing economies was more than six times the annual growth rate of 0.8% of high-income economies. Figure 1.7 presents the extreme and moderate poverty rates of the 89 developing economies for different years, from 1980 to 2014.
During these two centuries, the world's income per person has increased tenfold, and in the West the income per population now about 20 times the number in 1820 (Maddison, 2007). As incomes grew rapidly in the West and a few other regions, most of the less developed world lagged behind. The gap in economic freedom between the rich and poor nations of the world narrowed, as did the income gap.
As Sala-i-Martin and Pinkovskiy note, the population-weighted average growth rate of developing economies in the 1980s and 1990s was higher than that of high-income countries. As Figure 1.6 illustrates, the growth of low-income countries accelerated compared to their high-income countries in the period from 2000 to 2014.
Economic freedom and human progress
In turn, this movement will reduce the gap between high- and low-income countries. However, if low-income countries adopt policies more consistent with economic freedom, convergence will occur and the income gap will decrease. Xavier Sala-i-Martin of Columbia University and Maxim Pinkovskiy of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York examined the data on this question in great detail.
The graphs start with the data on the relationship between economic freedom and the level of GDP per capita and economic growth. In recent years, numerous scientific studies have analyzed these relationships in detail and, almost without exception, found that countries with greater and increasing economic freedom grow faster and achieve higher GDP per capita (Hall and Lawson, 2014). . Many of the relationships illustrated in the charts below reflect the impact of economic freedom as it operates through increasing economic growth.
In other cases, the observed relationships may reflect the fact that some of the variables that influence economic freedom can also influence political factors, such as trust, fairness in government, and protection of civil liberties. Thus, we do not necessarily argue that there is a direct causal relationship between economic freedom and the variables discussed below.
Sources: Gwartney, Lawson and Hall, 2015, World Economic Freedom: Annual Report 2015; World Bank, 2016, World Development Indicators. Sources: Gwartney, Lawson and Hall, 2015, World Economic Freedom: Annual Report 2015; World Bank, 2016, World Development Indicators; for details, see Connors, 2011. The share of income earned by the poorest 10% of the population is unrelated to economic freedom.
4,504 Annual income per capita of poorest 10%, 2014
Country Data Tables
This chapter presents detailed data on the components used in constructing the EFW index for the 159 jurisdictions included in this study. Like all ratings in the index, these are values out of 10; 10 is the highest possible rating and zero (0) is the lowest. In the following tables, the top row shows the summary rating of the country for each year and, in brackets, the overall ranking.
In the rows below, titles on the left in bold indicate the five areas of financial freedom that are combined to generate an overall score. Below each area title are the titles of the components and subcomponents that are combined to generate that area's score. Shown in italics next to some scores are the actual data used to derive that component rating.
A more complete description of each component, including the methodology used to calculate the scores, is available in the Appendix: Explanations and Data Sources (p. 273). For researchers Linked data is not listed in the following tables, but is available at
Albania
Algeria
Angola
Argentina
Armenia
Australia
Austria
Azerbaijan
Bahamas
Bahrain
Bangladesh
Barbados
Belgium
Belize
Benin
Bhutan
Bolivia
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Botswana
Brazil
Brunei Darussalam
Bulgaria
Burkina Faso
Burundi
Cambodia
Cameroon
Canada
Cape Verde
Central African Republic
Chad
Chile
China
Colombia
Congo, Democratic Republic of
Congo, Republic of
Costa Rica
Côte d’Ivoire
Croatia
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Denmark
Dominican Republic
Ecuador
Egypt
El Salvador
Estonia
Ethiopia
Fiji
Finland
France
Gabon
Gambia, The
Georgia
Germany
Ghana
Greece
Guatemala
Guinea
Guinea-Bissau
Guyana
Haiti
Honduras
Hong Kong
Hungary
Iceland
India
Indonesia
Iran
Ireland
Israel
Italy
Jamaica
Japan
Jordan
Kazakhstan
Kenya
Korea, South
Kuwait
Kyrgyz Republic
Laos
Latvia
Lebanon
Lesotho
Liberia
Libya
Lithuania
Luxembourg
Macedonia
Madagascar
Malawi
Malaysia
Mali
Malta
Mauritania
Mauritius
Mexico
Moldova
Mongolia
Montenegro
Morocco
Mozambique
Myanmar
Namibia
Nepal
Netherlands
New Zealand
Nicaragua
Niger
Nigeria
Norway
Oman
Pakistan
Panama
Papua New Guinea
Paraguay
Peru
Philippines
Poland
Portugal
Qatar
Romania
Russia
Rwanda
Saudi Arabia
Senegal
Serbia
Seychelles
Sierra Leone
Singapore
Slovak Republic
Slovenia
South Africa
Spain
Sri Lanka
Suriname
Swaziland
Sweden
Switzerland
Syria
Taiwan
Tajikistan
Tanzania
Thailand
Timor-Leste
Togo
Trinidad and Tobago
Tunisia
Turkey
Uganda
Ukraine
United Arab Emirates
United Kingdom
United States
Uruguay
Venezuela
Vietnam
Yemen, Republic of
Zambia
Zimbabwe
Gender Disparity in Legal Rights and Its Effect on Economic Freedom
Introduction
Such rules limit women's ability to make financial choices and become financially independent. In Jordan, although a constitutional right to work is formally granted to women, the legal obligation for women to obey their husbands means that few women work outside the home. This is reflected in Jordan's female labor force participation rate, which has consistently hovered around 15% over the past two decades.
Women face a similar situation in Saudi Arabia, where the female labor force participation rate has been between 18% and 20% over the same period. Failure to account for existing gender disparities in legal rights distorts comparisons between countries of economic freedom. Current understanding of the relationships between economic freedom and various development outcomes may also be obscured.
Adjusting the EFW index to account for gender disparities in legal rights enhances our ability to understand how market institutions affect people's lives.
Description of data
