Our friends at the Heritage Foundation, in conjunction with the Wall Street Journal, recently published their Index of Economic Freedom. For those of you unfamiliar with the publication, the Index measures ten components of economic freedom, assigning each a score between 1 and 100. All scores are then combined to give an overall economic freedom grade to participating countries. The ten components include the following: business freedom, trade freedom, fiscal freedom, government spending, monetary freedom, investment freedom, financial freedom, property rights, freedom from corruption, and labor freedom. The recently-distributed Index reports on policy developments in the second half of 2009 in 183 countries.
Just a few of its key findings:
- The global average economic freedom score for the 2011 Index is 59.7, a 0.3 point increase from last year;
- Along with Hong Kong and Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, and Canada have solidified their status as the world’s “free” economies;
- All regions except Europe and North America recorded increased levels of economic freedom;
- Every region continues to maintain at least one of the top 20 freest economies;
- High levels of government spending in response to the global economic turmoil have not resulted in higher economic growth.
The top 5 countries in the Index of Economic Freedom are Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, and Switzerland. The United States comes in 9th with a “Mostly Free” score of 77.8%.
Check out the full list of rankings here. I’d also encourage you to take a look at Index Executive Highlights.