Economic Freedom of the Worlds in the 1950s and 1960s

Abstract

This paper uses newly gathered and available data and autoregressive methods to create an economic freedom index for the 1950s and 1960s for up to 95 countries. This index is designed to be as compatible as possible with the Economic Freedom of the World (EFW) index published annually by the Fraser Institute. Finally, the new index is used to investigate recent a claim attributed to Jeffrey Sachs by Tyler Cowen that institutions are poor predictors of long term economic growth.

Keywords: Economic Freedom, Economic Growth, Institutions

JEL Classification: O43, N10, N40, P51