US state‐level economic freedom during the COVID‐19 pandemic

Abstract

AbstractThe COVID‐19 pandemic led to extensive new government regulations and lockdown policies that significantly reduced economic freedom across US states. Many of these new pandemic‐related regulatory restrictions on economic freedom varied significantly from state to state but are largely missed by the existingEconomic Freedom of North America Report(EFNA). This paper adjusts the Our World in DataCOVID‐19 Stringency Indexinto a state‐level measure oflockdown regulatory freedomand then merges it into the EFNA index to better measure relative economic freedom across US states in 2020. We find significant differences in the relative ranking of economic freedom between states once we adjust for lockdown regulatory restrictions.