Economic Freedom of the World: 2018 Report

Economic Freedom of the World

 The foundations of economic freedom are personal choice, voluntary exchange, and open markets. As Adam Smith, Milton Friedman, and Friedrich Hayek have stressed, freedom of exchange and market coordination provide the fuel for economic progress. Without exchange and entrepreneurial activity coordinated through markets, modern living standards would be impossible.

Potentially advantageous exchanges do not always occur. Their realization is dependent on the presence of sound money, rule of law, and security of property rights, among other factors. Economic Freedom of the World seeks to measure the consistency of the institutions and policies of various countries with voluntary exchange and the other dimensions of economic freedom. The report is copublished by the Cato Institute, the Fraser Institute in Canada and more than 70 think tanks around the world.

View an interactive map of economic freedom

Economic Freedom of the World: 2018 Annual Report

By James Gwartney, Robert Lawson, and Joshua Hall, with the assistance of Ryan Murphy, and contributions from Pál Czeglédi, Rosemarie Fike, Fred McMahon, Carlos Newland

Hong Kong and Singapore retain the top two positions with a score of 8.97 and 8.84 out of 10, respectively. The rest of this year’s top scores are New Zealand, Switzerland, Ireland, United States, Georgia, Mauritius, United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada.

It is worth noting that the United States returned to the top 10 in 2016 after an absence of several years. The rankings of other large economies in this year’s index are Germany (20th), Japan (41st), Italy (54th), France (57th), Mexico (82nd), Russia (87th), India (96th), China (108th), and Brazil (144th). The 10 lowest-rated countries are: Sudan, Guinea-Bissau, Angola, Central African Republic, Republic of Congo, Syria, Algeria, Argentina, Libya, and lastly Venezuela.

Nations in the top quartile of economic freedom had an average per capita GDP of US$40,376 in 2016, compared to $5,649 for bottom quartile nations. Moreover, the average income of the poorest 10% in the most economically free nations is almost twice the average per capita income in the least free nations. Life expectancy is 79.5 years in the top quartile compared to 64.4 years in the bottom quartile, and political and civil liberties are considerably higher in economically free nations than in unfree nations.

The first Economic Freedom of the World Report, published in 1996, was the result of a decade of research by a team which included several Nobel Laureates and over 60 other leading scholars in a broad range of fields, from economics to political science, and from law to philosophy. This is the 22nd edition of Economic Freedom of the World and this year’s publication ranks 162 countries and territories for 2016, the most recent year for which data are available.

Contents:
Table of Contents [pdf, 550Kb]
Executive Summary [pdf, 571Kb]
Chapter 1, Economic Freedom of the World in 2016 [pdf, 991Kb]
Chapter 2, Country Data Tables [pdf, 1.5Mb]
Chapter 3, Measuring Global Support for Free Markets, 1990-2014 [pdf, 827Kb]
Appendix [pdf, 649Kb]
Acknowledgments [pdf, 579Kb]