The Heritage Foundation’s 2020 global Index of Economic Freedom generally demonstrates that the nations most successful in increasing their economic freedom (by reducing taxes and so forth) enjoy, according to the editors of the study, higher incomes and higher overall well-being. When the Index was first published in 1995, the United States ranked fifth in the world, but it fell to eleventh in the 2016 study and is seventeenth in the 2020 study. Singapore ranked first in 2020. New Zealand (third) and Australia (fourth) rank above America, as do the United Kingdom, Canada, Estonia, Georgia, Iceland, Chile, and Lithuania. 

a. What is economic freedom? 

b. The Heritage Foundation lists 10 factors, including business freedom, in its list of ingredients in measuring economic freedom. In addition to business freedom, what other factors would you include in a list designed to measure a nation’s level of overall economic freedom? 

c. How does economic freedom help an economy grow?