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For over a decade, The Wall Street Journal and The Heritage Foundation, Washington's preeminent think tank, have tracked the march of economic freedom around the world with the influential Index of Economic Freedom.
What is economic freedom?
The highest form of economic freedom provides an absolute right of property ownership, fully realized freedoms of movement for labor, capital, and goods, and an absolute absence of coercion or constraint of economic liberty beyond the extent necessary for citizens to protect and maintain liberty itself. In other words, individuals are free to work, produce, consume, and invest in any way they please, and that freedom is both protected by the state and unconstrained by the state. (See Chapter 4, the Methodology.)
How do you measure economic freedom?
We measure 10 specific factors, and average them equally into a total score. Each one of the 10 freedoms is graded using a scale from 0 to 100, where 100 represents the maximum freedom. A score of 100 signifies an economic environment or set of policies that is most conducive to economic freedom.
The 2009 Index also has our traditional country pages, so that each freedom in every economy is explained in detail. Every country page includes new charts highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of each economy.
The Top 10
| Rank | Country | Overall | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hong Kong | 90.0 | +0.3 |
| 2 | Singapore | 87.1 | -0.2 |
| 3 | Australia | 82.6 | +0.4 |
| 4 | Ireland | 82.2 | -0.3 |
| 5 | New Zealand | 82.0 | +1.2 |
| 6 | United States | 80.7 | -0.3 |
| 7 | Canada | 80.5 | +0.3 |
| 8 | Denmark | 80.0 | +0.4 |
| 9 | Switzerland | 79.4 | -0.1 |
| 10 | United Kingdom | 79.0 | -0.5 |
The Rise and Fall
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