Index of Economic Freedom

The Wall Street Journal and the Heritage Foundation have produce The 2009 Index of Economic Freedom. It is interesting to see correlations. I need to dig them out but just eye-balling the list, probably ten of the top twenty-five countries would appear on all four lists if we were looking at economic freedom, political freedom, economic productivity and reading participation. All the countries with relatively high reading participation (Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Britain, the US) are all high on the economic freedom list. OECD countries with low reading rates such as France, Italy, Spain, and Greece are well down the economic freedom league. All of these type of lists are to some degree contingent on certain prejudicial decisions in their construction but are none-the-less interesting in their outcomes.