This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, April 12th, 2024.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Over at least the last two decades, countries that perform well in terms of human freedom

are much more prosperous.

That shouldn't be surprising, but the strength of that relationship should inform economic

and development policy.

Hido Institute adjunct John Early has dug a little deeper into the data.

We spoke last month in Dallas.

The Cato Institute is the partner with the Fraser Institute in producing the Human Freedom

Index that I know Ian Vasquez spends a lot of time on to make

sure all the numbers are right and one of the most profound things that I've seen is the degree to which freedom and prosperity go together.

How should we understand that relationship?

It's actually a relationship that's kind of been noted throughout history going all the way back to Plato.

You know, Adam Smith and Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek have all advocated for and shown how freedom generates more prosperity.

And this index gives us a chance

in how to test that mathematically.

Does the greater level of freedom within the indexes of freedom, there actually

are 82 different components that go into it. Does the greater freedom there translate

into greater prosperity and the research that I've done shows

that A that's true, B it's true very strongly and thirdly that's very important that's

a good news.

So how do we understand that relationship in, you know, more granular detail?

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