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Measuring economic freedom during the Covid-19 pandemic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2022

Vincent J. Miozzi  and
Benjamin Powell
Vincent J. Miozzi
Affiliation:
Free Market Institute, Texas Tech University, Lubbock TX, USA
Benjamin Powell*
Affiliation:
Free Market Institute, Texas Tech University, Lubbock TX, USA
*
*Corresponding author. Email: benjamin.powell@ttu.edu
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Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 led to extensive new government regulations and lockdown policies that, according to some prominent definitions, severely reduced economic freedom. However, many of these new pandemic-related regulatory restrictions on economic freedom are largely missed by the Economic Freedom of the World Report (EFW). This paper first adjusts the Our World in Data Covid-19 Stringency Index into a measure of lockdown regulatory freedom and then merges it into the EFW index to better measure countries' 2020 cross-sectional relative economic freedom. We find significant differences in the relative ranking of economic freedom between countries once we adjust for lockdown regulatory restrictions.

Keywords

Covid-19economic freedominstitutionspandemicI18H1
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Institutional Economics , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , April 2023 , pp. 229 - 250
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Millennium Economics Ltd.

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