Economic freedom
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Economic freedom or economic liberty is a hard-to-measure freedom available to members of a society to engage in various economic activities and achieve certain economic outcomes. This is a term used in economic and policy debates as well as in the philosophy of economics. The term “economic freedom” is often used to refer to the strength of capitalist economic institutions, historically by classical liberals, and more recently popularized by a variety of right-wing authors and think tanks based on debatable quality measures.
The main of these indicators are:
- Index of Economic Freedom by the Heritage Foundation.
- Economic Freedom of the World by the Fraser Institute.
- World Survey of Economic Freedom by the Freedom House.
Another approach to economic freedom extends the welfare economics study of individual choice, with greater economic freedom coming from a “larger” (in some technical sense) set of possible choices. Further conceptions of economic freedom include freedom from want and the freedom to engage in collective bargaining.
See also
Capitalism, Economic liberalism
Papers
- De Haan, J., & Sturm, J. E. (2000). On the relationship between economic freedom and economic growth. European Journal of Political Economy, 16(2), 215-241.
- Easton, S. T., & Walker, M. A. (1997). Income, growth, and economic freedom. The American Economic Review, 87(2), 328-332.
- Carlsson, F., & Lundström, S. (2002). Economic freedom and growth: Decomposing the effects. Public choice, 112(3-4), 335-344.
- Berggren, N. (2003). The benefits of economic freedom: a survey. The independent review, 8(2), 193-211.