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| Hong Kong remains the world’s freest economy, according to the Economic Freedom of the World: 2008 Annual Report. |
Hong Kong remains the world’s freest economy, according to the Economic Freedom of the World: 2008 Annual Report released September 16 by the Cato Institute. It is the 12th consecutive year Hong Kong has received the highest rating.
The September 16 report, produced by Canada’s Fraser Institute and the Economic Freedom Network, a group of independent institutes in 75 nations and territories, ranks 141 economies for 2006, the most recent year for which data are available, on policies that are supportive of economic freedom.
Hong Kong scored 8.94 out of 10, retaining the highest rating for economic freedom, followed by Singapore and New Zealand. The United States tied for eighth with Australia.
Speaking at a “Celebrating the Miracle of Hong Kong” gala dinner in Hong Kong organized by the Fraser Institute, Chief Executive Donald Tsang welcomed the report’s findings and noted the Fraser Institute and Hong Kong share an “unswerving commitment to free trade and open markets, and the elimination of barriers to trade and investment.”
Mr. Tsang said Hong Kong values the recognition and pledged to “continue to make every effort to ‘walk the walk’ of economic freedom in the years ahead.”
The Cato Institute used 42 measures to construct a summary index and to determine the degree of economic freedom in five broad areas: size of government; legal structure and security of property rights; access to sound money; freedom to trade internationally; and regulation of credit, labor and business.
The first Economic Freedom of the World Report, published in 1996, was the result of a decade of research by a team that included several Nobel laureates, such as Milton Friedman, and more than 60 leading scholars in a broad range of fields, from economics to political science, law and philosophy.
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