The Fraser Institute has put out its annual report on Economic Freedom of the World -- a score and rank measuring "the degree to which the policies and institutions of countries support economic freedom". It's basically a rundown of countries based on how much (or little) they embrace free trade, both domestically and abroad. The index is based on scores in five areas:

1) Size of government (taxes=bad)
2) Legal structure and security of property rights (secure=good)
3) Access to sound money (access=good)
4) Freedom to trade internationally (trade=good)
5) Regulation of credit, labor, and business (regulation=bad)

Hong Kong comes top (again), followed by the usual suspects: Singapore, New Zealand, Switzerland, Canada-UK-USA (three-way tie!), Estonia (who knew?), Australia, and Ireland. France and Italy tie for 52nd, for obvious reasons (part of a four-way tie with Jordan and the Czech Republic). There are few surprises in the order; economic freedom tracks roughly with GDP per capita, it would seem. Most of the countries in the bottom fifth of the sample are African, and in the bottom ten only Venezuela and Myanmar (Burma) are not on the continent.

Oh, and it's also dedicated to Milton Friedman!

So, after looking through this report, I wondered if anyone else does something similar. Turns out the Heritage Foundation, in conjunction with the Wall Street Journal, also have rankings out on Economic Freedom. A few differences (Iran scores much much lower in this ranking), but overall nothing too surprising until you get to the very bottom of the list. The worst country (out of 157) for economic freedom according to Heritage and WSJ is North Korea, with 3% freedom. That's right--3%. The next lowest is Cuba (sense a trend?) and even it gets 29.7% free. Sheesh. As Team America: World Police taught us, it's "ronery" at the bottom.