Economic Model

(Index) that the degree of economic freedom that is present within any given country‘s socio-economic policies and activities will directly affect the standard of living of that country‘s citizens. In that regard, it has been asserted that ―most of the world‘s economically free countries are those with a rule of law and system of economic liberty inherited or adopted from the Anglo-Saxon capitalist model ‖ (Feulner, 2002, p. xiii). The recent trends reported in the Index support this assertion: ―North America and Europe remain the world‘s most economically free [region], containing six of the top ten freest countries….On net, the region shows a gain in economic freedom by four ‖ (O‘Driscoll, Jr., Holmes, and O‘Grady, 2002, p. 3). We propose that a more accurate assertion would be that the foundations of economic freedom can be better explained as a product of ―a rule of law and system of economic liberty inherited or adopted from the…‖ Judeo-Christian socio-economic model. This study examines this assertion with the use of cluste