Index of economic freedom: Unrealized pedagogical opportunities

Mark Maier and John A. Miller

The Journal of Economic Education, 2017, vol. 48, issue 3, 186-192

Abstract: Although the Index of Economic Freedom appears in many economic textbooks, their coverage of the index misses opportunities to teach statistical and policy-related concepts important for the principles course. The standard textbook presentation passes up an opportunity to examine the statistical issues of weighting in composite index numbers and correlation versus causation. In addition, textbook presentations fail to examine the assumptions made in the indexes about key economic concepts. These include inflation rate targets, appropriate government spending levels, tax rates, labor standards, financial regulation, monetary policy, property rights, government regulation, and even the meaning of economic freedom. This study explores how examining economic freedom index assumptions can help students understand key economic policy debates.

Date: 2017
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00220485.2017.1320606 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:jeduce:v:48:y:2017:i:3:p:186-192

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/VECE20

DOI: 10.1080/00220485.2017.1320606

Access Statistics for this article

The Journal of Economic Education is currently edited by William Walstad

More articles in The Journal of Economic Education from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().