Freedomain Radio

A graph from my upcoming presentation...

That sounds like a good idea to put that graph in the presentation. Just one thing, though: How did you calculate the percentages of economics freedom?

Vincent:

That sounds like a good idea to put that graph in the presentation. Just one thing, though: How did you calculate the percentages of economics freedom?

http://www.heritage.org/Index/countries.cfm

• Q.1. 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.)



• Q.2. 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 ten component freedoms are:
  
  
  Business Freedom | Trade Freedom | Fiscal Freedom | Government Size | Monetary Freedom | Investment Freedom | Financial Freedom | Property rights | Freedom from Corruption | Labor Freedom
  
  
  
• Q.3. How do you weight the factors of economic freedom to grade countries?
  
  In the Index of Economic Freedom, all 10 factors are equally weighted in order not to bias the overall score toward any one factor or policy direction.



• Q.4. What is your period of study?
  
  For the 2008 Index of Economic Freedom, the authors generally examined data for the period covering the second half of 2006 through the first half of 2007. To the extent possible, the information considered for each factor was current as of June 30, 2007. It is important to understand, however, that some factors are based on historical information. For example, the monetary policy factor is a 3-year weighted average rate of inflation from January 1, 2004, to December 31, 2006. Other factors are current for the year in which the Index is published. For example, the taxation variable for this Index considers tax rates that apply to the taxable year 2007.

That is not suprising.

I may be misreading this, but should it "> 13% freedom in atheist countries"?  As in: economic freedom is greater than 13% higher on average in atheist countries?