Economic Freedom and Fiscal Performance: A Regression Analysis of Indices of Economic Freedom on Per Capita GDP

This paper explores whether different forms of economic freedom drive fiscal performance. We also seek to determine which specific measurements of economic freedom have the most statistically significant impacts. Though the results of our analysis show that economic freedom does impact levels of per capita GDP, the interpretation of these results is more complicated. Because some indices of economic freedom have negative effects on per capita GDP or are statistically insignificant, it is important to note that simply generally increasing a country’s overall level of economic freedom will not necessarily spur economic growth or increase fiscal performance. This paper does not seek to argue for or against the neo-liberal tradition, but rather provide an additional body of analysis that proves useful in analyzing economic relationships