Index of Economic Freedom by Country 2024

The Index of Economic Freedom by Country is an annual ranking developed by The Heritage Foundation to measure the degree of economic freedom in nations worldwide. It evaluates countries based on 12 key factors grouped into four categories: rule of law, government size, regulatory efficiency, and market openness. These factors include property rights, judicial effectiveness, government integrity, tax burden, government spending, labor freedom, and trade freedom, among others. Each factor is scored on a scale of 0 to 100, with the overall score being an average of these values. Higher scores indicate greater economic freedom. The index reflects how policies and institutions influence the ease of doing business, trade, and economic participation. Countries are grouped into categories such as free, mostly free, moderately free, mostly unfree, and repressed. The rankings aim to highlight the link between economic freedom and prosperity, fostering policy debates on how to improve economic opportunities worldwide.