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This paper assesses the economic importance and the limits of using the Economic Freedom Index (EFI) to help explain and realize higher levels of per-capita income. Specifically, I elaborate on the need to disaggregate and place the EFI into a coherent and meaningful theoretical context in order to generate economically cogent analytical predictions as well as more reasonable public policy recommendations. As it stands, the EFI can produce highly misleading causal results with potentially disastrous consequences for public policy. Hereby, I make a preliminary attempt at constructing an alternative aggregate index to measure the importance of market-related institutions for achieving higher levels of per-capita income. This alternative index, termed here the Good Capitalist Governance Index (GCGI), better correlates with per-capita income and has a higher threshold value than the Economic Freedom Index. The GCGI highlights the importance of secure private rights, limited corruption, and sound money for the realization of higher levels of per-capita income. The evidence supports the hypothesis that good capitalist governance requires a well-working, but not minimalist government. Keywords: economic development, economic freedom index, good governance index, institutional economics JEL Classifications: B41, B52, C10, C80, H1, H3, O1, O4, O5, The Economic Freedom Index (EFI), as developed by the Fraser Institute and the Heritage Foundation, has received considerable attention as an indicator of the extent to which countries have met [...]

Technological change is modeled as endogenous in the sense that it is affected by economic, behavioral, and institutional variables. Technological change is especially affected by changes in relative input prices and their level, of which the price of labor is particularly important. Input prices are affected by institutional variables. Such prices also impact on the firm's efficiency, which in turn affects growth rates as well as the rate of technical change. As relative factor prices or their level increase, firms are induced to innovate or adopt extant technology to remain competitive or to maintain current profit rates. High wage firms can be expected to engage in such induced technological change, leading the growth process thereby yielding lower unit costs and increasing the level of material welfare. Relatively low wage economies can be locked into a state of economic inefficiency and laggard technological progress, especially in the long run. Keywords: High wage-led growth, endogenous growth, institutional change, x-efficiency, technical change JEL Classification Codes: B52, E6, J3, O1, 03, A fundamental tenant of conventional economic theory is that there is only one sustainable wage path to economic development and, in the long run, economies converge in terms of real [...]

A fundamental difference between mainstream or traditional neoclassical theory and the various variants of behavioral economics is that to behavioral economics assumptions matter substantively to the construction of economic models [...]

This article examines some of the more pertinent details of the feminization of clerical work in the context of early twentieth century Canada and the impact that this had upon [...]

Reviewed by Morris Altman Gregory Marchildon has written an intriguing and fascinating financial history of Canada from the perspective of the wheeling and dealing of one of Canada's leading businessmen [...]

Reviewed by Morris Altman This is a provocative, well-written, and well-documented book which is a must read, if only because it reintroduces the question of the importance of culture and [...]

The poorer production of French Canadian farmers than those not of French origin cannot be fully explained by Quebec's agricultural policy. Although the seigniorial system used to define land tenure created a cash-poor population with its mounting dues structure, the primary cause was regional differences in markets and practices that were more capital and labor intensive.

Chronicles plant size in Canadian manufacturing from 1870 to 1910. Evolution of the Canadian economy in the post-Confederation period; Relationship between the wheat boom and Canadian economic development; Output growth in Canadian manufacturing.