Narrow Results

The objective of this study is to evaluate the impacts of policy uncertainty and economic freedom on the stability of national banking systems worldwide. The research sample includes 165 countries and covers the period from 1997 to 2021. The study employs panel data estimation methods including the fixed effects model, random effects model, Driscoll-Kraay standard errors approach, and system GMM. The findings consistently show that policy uncertainties, including world policy uncertainty, trade policy uncertainty, and global economic policy uncertainty, negatively affect bank stability. Additionally, economic freedom policies can help mitigate the negative impact of policy uncertainty.

In this study, both cross-country and panel techniques have been used to analyze the long-term impact of institutions on investment and economic growth in the context of neoclassical model. The empirical results indicate that both physical and human capital investment have positive impact on economic growth. Economic freedom has a direct impact on economic growth by enhancing factor productivity and indirect by increasing investment. Political and civil liberties also exert positive impact on investment. Further, an important relationship exists between institutional freedom and human capital investment in both cross-country and panel data analysis.

Although the body of literature on female entrepreneurs is relatively small when compared to that of men; the majority of articles that have focused on female entrepreneurs and issues surrounding them center on women in developed countries. Few studies place emphasis on female entrepreneurs in developing countries. Guided by the resource-based view of human and social capital, the article explores the relationship among individual and entrepreneurial factors, institutional factors and women’s venture success in developing countries. Hypotheses are tested with a sample of 350 female entrepreneurs using individual and country level data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) database and the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom. Female entrepreneurs were chosen from six developing countries: Argentina, Brazil, Hungary, India, Mexico and South Africa. Results indicate certain factors (i.e. household income, knowing an entrepreneur, and country of origin) play a role in venture success for female entrepreneurs in developing countries. Secondary analyses demonstrated that the developing country’s economic freedom, cultural norms, financial support and government supportiveness may also impact women’s venture success.

Entrepreneurship is an integral part of change and development, contributing positively to employment, poverty reduction and income growth. It flourishes in an institutional context of freedom rather than suppression. This paper examines the relationship between economic freedom, income and entrepreneurship in South Africa, using (1994–2019) time-series data. Economic freedom was measured by the Economic Freedom Index (FREE) as a proxy. Income and early-stage entrepreneurship were proxied by gross domestic product per capita (GDPC) and total entrepreneurial activity (TEA), respectively. Johansen cointegration tests and a vector error correction model (VECM) were used to estimate the short- and long-run associations between the variables. The results indicate a bi-directional short- and long-run cointegrating relationship between freedom and entrepreneurship; freedom is also found to be a significant predictor of GDPC in South Africa. Thus, improvements in real per capita GDP and economic freedom tend to enhance early-stage entrepreneurship, providing greater scope for business formations. Hence, a mindset change from radical economic transformation to pro-economic freedom might help in stimulating entrepreneurship.

The existing literature is filled with mixed findings on the effect of entrepreneurship on economic growth. In particular, previous literature treats the effect of entrepreneurship on economic growth in isolation, while we emphasize the institutional environment, and especially, economic freedom. Using data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, we re-explore the relationship between entrepreneurship and growth and attempt to clarify the mixed findings. The systemic link between economic freedom, entrepreneurship and economic growth is investigated by examining a panel of 54 countries (2008-2018). The results validate that overall economic freedom and its subcomponents, such as the rule of law, limited government size, regulatory efficiency and market openness promote the positive effects of entrepreneurial activity on economic growth. The results suggest that economic freedom not only directs individual efforts to entrepreneurial activity, but also affects the extent to which entrepreneurial activity encourages higher growth rates. The findings contradict policy recommendations that some measures of economic freedom are not significantly associated with entrepreneurship.

This study examines the effect of the shadow economy, economic freedom and other macroeconomic factors on formal entrepreneurship in Asian countries. The dataset encompasses 28 countries over the period from 1995 to 2018. The Fixed Effect Model (FEM) and Generalized Least Squares (GLS) methodologies are employed for regression analysis. The results indicate a nonlinear relationship between the shadow economy and formal entrepreneurship. Economic freedom, particularly trade freedom, significantly enhances entrepreneurship. Positive macroeconomic influences on formal entrepreneurship include financial development, political stability, GDP per capita growth and foreign direct investment net inflows, while government spending and unemployment negatively affect entrepreneurship. The findings suggest that a substantial shadow economy does not inherently impede formal entrepreneurship. Consequently, governments should prudently consider the role of the shadow economy in fostering entrepreneurial growth. Moreover, policies aimed at improving economic freedom, especially trade freedom, can create a conducive environment for boosting formal entrepreneurship.

This paper provides an empirical investigation of the main determinants of entrepreneurial activities across three groups of countries over the period 2004–2008, by specifically examining the importance of institutional setting and economic growth on entrepreneurial activities. The classification of countries is based on the Economic Freedom Index and the World Economic Forum (2011) which groups them on the basis of whether they are innovation-driven, efficiency-driven, or factor-driven countries. On the one hand, empirical results find a positive and significant role for economic freedom to accelerate entrepreneurial activities and growth in innovation and efficiency-driven countries characterized by strong institutional systems. On the other hand, the results suggest that in factor-driven countries characterized by relatively less economic freedom and weak institutions, there is a significant negative relationship between economic freedom and entrepreneurial activities.

We hypothesize that both liberalization and economic freedom are double-edged swords for the banking industry because they can increase both stability and fragility of the banks. To test our hypotheses, we use the two-step GMM technique to examine the impact of economic freedom and the impacts of all of its sub-components on the risk-taking behavior of US commercial banks for the period from 2003 to 2019. We find that economic freedom adversely affects banks’ risks, and therefore, increases the stability of the banking system. We observe that not all types of freedoms have positive outcomes in the banking sector, both investment and trade-related deregulation increase the fragility of the banking sector, and any type of relaxation in which banks play a direct role has a negative influence on the characteristics of banks like capital control or trade. Consistent with the competition stability theory, our findings conclude that higher economic freedom will yield higher stability in the US commercial banks. Whereas our findings are heterogeneous across all of its sub-components, all the sub-components expect investment and trade freedom positively influence the banks’ stability. Additionally, the result of this study remains consistent across well-, and under-capitalized banks, and the outcome of this study remains robust to the alternative measures of risk. Regulators, policymakers and bank managers could draw implications from the results in this paper in deciding how much liberalization the banks can handle and they also must consider the heterogeneity in the impacts from all of the sub-components because not all of them generate favorable outcomes for banks.

The implementation of measures to promote renewable energy sources (RES) has shown to have a significant impact in reducing CO2 emissions and, at the same time, promotes technology substitution and changes in the energy production and consumption mix. In this paper, we look at RES regulation measures together with variables capturing economic freedom, business and investment freedom, difficulty of starting a business and cost of contract enforcement and look at assessing the effects of these on the development of new installations of RES. Our analysis shows that not only RES regulation is significant in promoting increased RES capacity but it does so in the presence of the correct signs of these other market variables: higher economic and investment freedom, less complicated procedures for starting up a business and lower cost of contract enforcement, all have a positive effect in installed RES capacity. Our results have significant policy implications as they point out that RES regulation and market initiatives go in tandem in promoting higher use of RES in energy production. These are separate channels with which policy makers can work to affect many positive spillovers that extend from higher investment activity, to energy innovation and lower emissions.

This paper studies the relationship between religious liberty and economic freedom. First, three new facts emerge: (a) religious liberty has increased since 1960, but has slipped substantially over the past decade; (b) the countries that experienced the largest declines in religious liberty tend to have greater economic freedom, especially property rights; (c) changes in religious liberty are associated with changes in the allocation of time to religious activities. Second, using a combination of vector autoregressions and dynamic panel methods, improvements in religious liberty tend to precede economic freedom. Finally, increases in religious liberty have a wide array of spillovers that are important determinants of economic freedom and explain the direction of causality. Countries cannot have long-run economic prosperity and freedom without actively allowing for and promoting religious liberty.

The aim of this paper is to find a new answer to an old question “Is economic freedom good or not for economies?” which was refreshed after the Global Financial Crisis of 2008. For this purpose, the relationship between economic freedom and economic growth, and the relationship between economic freedom and total factor productivity in OECD countries were investigated by using panel data for the period of 1995-2009. Study employed the recently developed cointegration test by Westerlund (2007) and the estimation technique by Bai and Kao (2006) which account for cross-sectional dependence that is an important problem in the panel data studies. Although no significant relationship found between economic freedom and total factor productivity, cointegration analysis revealed that economic freedom matters for economic growth in OECD countries in the long-run, and estimation results showed that direction of the impact is negative.

This research found that recent efforts aimed at stimulating both domestic and foreign investment have attached great importance to the improvement of the regulatory framework and institutions of economic freedom. From the empirical perspective, benchmarking panel data of two samples of countries of Sub-Saharan Africa and Western Europe was used to assess the disaggregated effect of the regulatory variables of economic freedom on FDI. The results indicate that institutional variables of economic freedom are important in attracting FDI for both Europe and Africa. However, the specific variables that are statistically significant depend on the current state of development of the countries in the samples. These results are useful for comparing and identifying the priorities of the regulatory framework reforms for improving economic performance.

This paper empirically investigates the effect of economic freedom on the informal economies in a sample of 112 countries over the period 2000–2007. We employ two methodologies: fixed effect and the GMM models. We find a statistically significant negative relationship between economic freedom and the informal economy. This conclusion indicates that the nature of the economic system plays an important role in seizing the informal economy. Further, our results demonstrate that the formal and informal economies are substitutes. The policy implication is that economies with high share of informal economy should work with fewer economic restrictions.

The relationship between intellectual property rights (IPR) protection and foreign direct investment (FDI) continues to pose a challenging puzzle. While several studies have found that these two variables are positively correlated, others have not been able to find conclusive results. We contend that a partial explanation resides on institutional differences among host countries. We find that increases in IPR protection encourage FDI in countries in which the institutional environment, as proxied by indices of economic freedom, is efficient but not otherwise. We use threshold regression techniques on samples ranging from 81 to 102 countries during the 1990 - 2010 period.

This paper integrates two growing strains of literature. The first strain looks at the effect of economic and political unions on outcomes such as bond ratings and economic convergence. The second strain looks at the determinants of economic freedom across countries. Building from these two literatures, we investigate the impact of joining the European Union on a country’s economic freedom. Using a panel of countries from 1970 to 2007, we find evidence that joining the European Union increases a country’s economic freedom. Empirically, however, the impact of joining the union on economic freedom is small.

This chapter provides an empirical investigation of the main determinants of entrepreneurial activities across three groups of countries over the period 2004–2008, by specifically examining the importance of institutional setting and economic growth on entrepreneurial activities. The classification of countries is based on the Economic Freedom Index and the World Economic Forum (2011) which groups them on the basis of whether they are innovation-driven, efficiencydriven, or factor-driven countries. On the one hand, empirical results find a positive and significant role for economic freedom to accelerate entrepreneurial activities and growth in innovation and efficiency-driven countries characterized by strong institutional systems. On the other hand, the results suggest that in factor-driven countries characterized by relatively less economic freedom and weak institutions, there is a significant negative relationship between economic freedom and entrepreneurial activities.