Move your mouse over the circles to view country names, and then click to view their profiles. Note: It will take several minutes to draw this plot the first time you view it. After that
all plots should appear much more quickly.
Strength of correlation (R squared): 0.658 (this correlation is potentially significant)
Index of 'economic freedom', according to the American organisation 'The Heritage Foundation'. It is worth noting that such indices are based on highly culturally contingent factors. This data makes a number of assumptions about 'freedom' and the role of the government that are not accepted by much of the world's population. A broad discussion of The Heritage Foundation's definition and methodology can be found at http://www.heritage.org/research/features/index/ChapterPDFs/chapter5.HTML.
The GCI, or the Growth competitiveness index, is composed of three pillars, all of which are widely accepted as being critical to economic growth: the quality of the macroeconomic environment, the state of a country's public institutions, and, given the increasing importance of technology in the development process, a country's technological readiness. The GCI aims specifically to gauge the ability of the world's economies to achieve sustained economic growth over the medium to long term.