The Benchmarking Practices of the Economically Freest Countries in Europe and the World

In our increasingly globalized economy, global competitiveness of countries and means to measure it gain increasing significance. One of the ways to measure it is by comparing an extent of economic freedom that countries have, which as surveys show can also largely explain differences in living standards across the world. Approaching the issue from a European perspective, which like most of the Western world capitalist economies for a number of reasons has a very different economic policies traditions than in many other parts of the world, we can see that the main hypothesis of the work can be confirmed, and it is possible for economic or national image reasons to earn the result of the freest world economy by adopting the benchmarking practices of the continent. Nevertheless, the other hypothesis of the work doesn't fulfill, meaning that by adopting taxing policies of some of the wealthiest European Union economies it's not possible anymore to reach the result of the freest economy, both in the world and Europe. Looking at the Index of Economic Freedom components and its scores, it becomes apparent that inclusion of government share components in its methodology is very disputable, similarly as the labour freedom component, and in lesser extent the monetary freedom component