Economic Freedom and Economic Growth Across U.S. States: A Spatial Panel Data Analysis

Joshua Hall, Donald Lacombe and Timothy Shaughnessy
Additional contact information
Donald Lacombe: West Virginia University, Agricultural and Resource Economics
Timothy Shaughnessy: Louisiana State University, Department of Economics

No 15-33, Working Papers from Department of Economics, West Virginia University

Abstract: There is a substantial literature estimating the effect of economic freedom on economic growth. Most studies examine the relationship between freedom and growth for countries, while a few examine the relationship for U.S. states. Absent in the state{level literature is consideration of the presence of spatial spillovers affecting the freedom{growth relationship. Neglecting to account for spatial autocorrelation can bias estimation results and therefore inferences drawn. We find evidence of a spatial pattern in real per-capita GSP that affects non-spatial estimates of the freedom{growth relationship. Taking into account the direct and indirect effects of economic freedom on GSP, we find a 10 percent increase in economic freedom is associated with a 4.2 percent increase in GSP.

Keywords: spatial panel data model; spatial econometrics; economic freedom (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 19 pages
Date: 2015-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-geo, nep-gro and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/cgi/viewcontent ... =econ_working-papers (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wvu:wpaper:15-33

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Department of Economics, West Virginia University Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Feng Yao ().