Is the World Getting Freer?

Is the World Getting Freer?

Fergus Hodgson, May 21, 2018

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Every year, the Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom of the World index ranks countries’ openness to markets. But how can one measure something so seemingly abstract as freedom or liberalization?

We discuss this and other topics with the man behind the study for the past 30 years, Robert Lawson of the O’Neil Center for Global Markets and Freedom at Southern Methodist University.

He argues that the scientific method can work in the social sciences as well, and that the ideology of a country’s ruling party is not the best indicator of its economic freedom.

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