Using various indicators for economic freedom, it is shown that increases in economic freedom are robustly related to economic growth. This conclusion holds even if the impact of outlying observations is taken into account. The level of economic freedom is not related to economic growth

We extend the sensitivity analysis of cross-country growth regressions of Levine and Renelt (1992) by introducing a semi-parametric formulation of their regression function. Our results differ from theirs in how certain policy variables affect growth rates. We find that distortion variables,...

Using various indicators for economic freedom, it is shown that increases in economic freedom are robustly related to economic growth. This conclusion holds even if the impact of outlying observations is taken into account. The level of economic freedom is not related to economic growth

The empirical economic growth literature is criticized for its lack of robustness. For different definitions of robustness, conclusions vary from "almost every correlation is fragile" to "a substantial number of explanatory variables are robust." We re-analyze the empirical results of the...