New Evidence on the Relationship Between Economic Freedom and Growth: A Panel Cointegration Analysis for The Case of OECD

The aim of this paper is to find a new answer to an old question "Is economic freedom good or not for economies?" which was refreshed after the Global Financial Crisis of 2008. For this purpose, the relationship between economic freedom and economic growth, and the relationship between economic freedom and total factor productivity in OECD countries were investigated by using panel data for the period of 1995-2009. Study employed the recently developed cointegration test by Westerlund (2007) and the estimation technique by Bai and Kao (2006) which account for cross-sectional dependence that is an important problem in the panel data studies. Although no significant relationship found between economic freedom and total factor productivity, cointegration analysis revealed that economic freedom matters for economic growth in OECD countries in the long-run, and estimation results showed that direction of the impact is negative.