economic freedom

The relationship between financial development and economic growth is the crucial issues which could grab economists and policy makers' attention to it. Financial market plays an essential role on each economy, because it conducts funds to those individuals or firms which have productive investment opportunities. If the financial system does not perform this role efficiently, the economic efficiency will decrease and consequently economic growth will be barricaded. One of the main disturbing cases of efficient financial system is asymmetric information. This paper tries to study the effect of financial development and symmetric information on economic growth for whole European Union members. For measuring the symmetric information, some proxies like ICT, IT and economic freedom components are used. In order to have a separate model per country, Pooled Data model is applied in 2000-2012. The results Show that financial development and symmetric information lead to a higher rate of economic growth among European Union members.    JEL Classification: O16, O40, D82, E69

Economic freedom or economic liberty is one of the instances of freedom which is a target intrinsically, and individuals and units make attempts to achieve. The liberalization of financial markets can have a different effect on economy. Several studies have indicated that economic liberalization has had a positive effect on developing economies by the reduction in capital expenditures, increase in profit-ability, and individuals’ investment. The present study aimed to investigate the effect of economic freedom on stock returns. The statistical population of this study is the selected countries of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) for the years 2001 to 2019, and is used in the statistical section of the Fraser Institute website and the World Bank website. In this study, the regression model of panel data was employed for data analysis. The research results show that the effect of the economic freedom variable is positive and significant on the stock price index and cash-on-cash return. At best, economic freedom can lead to increasing demand for stocks and, subsequently, raising the stock price index and cash-on-cash return. The government should provide a legal and regulatory framework to protect the rights of owners of assets and fair implementation of contracts, and facilitate access to sound money. It should also provide stable money and refrain from activities and interventions interfering in personal choices, exchanges and voluntary exchanges, and the free-dom to enter the competition in product and labour markets.

Environment quality and its determinants are one of the main challenges of the present and future of humanity and sustainable development is interpreted in the direction of preserving and improving the environment. In recent years, many studies have been conducted on the factors affecting environmental quality. One of the main topics that have been less considered in the related studies is the impact of governance on the quality of the environment. In this study, the impact of good governance components, including economic freedom, trade freedom, and political freedom, on the Environmental Performance Index (EPI) and its sub-indices including environmental health, ecosystem vitality, and climate change is investigated. The data required for statistical analysis are related to Middle East and North Africa region countries and Turkiye (MENAT) during 2000-2021. The panel data method was used to estimate the model and examine the relationship between the variables. The findings show that there is a positive and significant relationship between economic freedom and political freedom with the environmental performance index (EPI), and there is no significant relationship between trade freedom and EPI. </span>In addition, the study found that economic freedom had a detrimental effect on ecosystem vitality and climate change, leading to negative impacts in these areas. However, it had a positive impact on environmental health, indicating that it contributed positively to this aspect. On the other hand, political freedom was observed to have a positive effect on the vitality of the ecosystem and climate change. However, it did not have a significant impact on the overall health of the environment, suggesting that its influence was more prominent in specific areas related to ecosystem vitality and climate change. <span style="layout-grid-mode: line;" data-mce-fragment="1">The result of this research showed that economic freedom has led to more investment in the oil and gas sector of MENA countries, and therefore wastewater and gas emissions have had a negative impact on the vitality of the environment and climate change, but with the increase in production and sales of oil and Gas, per capita income of countries has increased, and environmental health has improved. Also, considering that political freedom among the MENA region has a lot of diversity, the results showed that the countries with more political freedom, through greater awareness of the society and more accountability of the governments and the establishment of environmental protection laws, had a positive impact on the environment. Of course, the environmental health index is more influenced by the economic situation and per capita production of countries and political freedom has little effect on it.