U.S. State-Level Economic Freedom During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Global economic freedom during the second year of the pandemic

“…This note updates Miozzi and Powell (2023 a , 2023 b ), which measured how COVID lockdown policy impacted global economic freedom in 2020. We employ Miozzi and Powell's lockdown regulatory freedom measure, updated with 2021 data, that is comprised of adjusted measures of mandatory workplace closures , mandatory cancellations of public events , restrictions on gathering sizes , stay at home orders , mandatory school closings , mandatory public transit closings , and mandated facial coverings , derived from the Our World in Data Covid-19 Stringency Index (Hale et al ., 2021).…”

“…Other research has already built on Miozzi and Powell (2023 a ) by measuring state-level lockdown regulatory freedom and adjusting state's economic freedom scores (Miozzi and Powell, 2023 b ) and by studying the pre-pandemic political economy factors correlated with the restrictiveness of lockdowns (Miozzi and Powell, forthcoming) and indicating how accounting for lockdown regulatory freedom would impact countries considered open access orders (Murphy, 2023). An online Appendix contains our indexes for scholars wishing to use them in further research 8…”

Mapping inflation to economic freedom in the post-COVID era

“…According to the Economic Freedom of the World (EFW) index (Gwartney et al ., 2023), worldwide economic freedom fell more sharply from 2019 to 2020 than at any other point in time covered by the dataset, which runs back to 1970. While the index, without the need to make any ad hoc adjustment, measured this drastic change, it did not completely capture the decline in economic freedom (Miozzi and Powell, 2023a, 2023b). And importantly, advanced Western economies did not yet experience the inflation that was to come.…”