Published by jasonsorens on 28 Jun 2011
We have identified and corrected an error in one of West Virginia’s workers’ compensation policies. Thanks to an alert reader for pointing out the error. The new labor regulations spreadsheet has been uploaded, and the freedom index has been updated. With the change, West Virginia rises one spot in economic freedom, to #39, and one spot in overall freedom, to #35.
Published by jasonsorens on 10 Jun 2011
Thanks to an alert reader for notifying us of an error in the gun control dataset. Texas was incorrectly coded as licensing dealers. The corrected gun control spreadsheet is now available in the Data section. Texas falls slightly on the “severity of gun control restrictions” index with the change, and switches places with Mississippi in the personal freedom ranking (now #12 rather than #13). Its overall freedom ranking remains unchanged. The new Freedom in the 50 States dataset is available in the relevant section.
Published by jasonsorens on 10 Jun 2011
Freedom in the 50 States 2011 has been receiving a good deal of media coverage lately, but the biggest television coverage so far has been a four-minute segment on Fox News:
Published by jasonsorens on 07 Jun 2011
Freedom in the 50 States 2011 has been released. Go here to download the study and use the interactive tools.
Here at statepolicyindex.com, you can find all the data used in the study. On our page for the study you will find the spreadsheet used for creating the freedom rankings, which you can download and use to create your own, personalized freedom rankings.
Published by jasonsorens on 06 Jun 2011
The new data are now available. Click through to start downloading data on over 200 state policies measured as of December 31, 2006 and December 31, 2008. In the coming days, expect more updates with figures and tables of interest drawn from the data, as well as a link to the second edition of Freedom in the 50 States.
Published by jasonsorens on 05 Jun 2011
Please excuse the construction! Over the next few days, we will be comprehensively revising this site to provide access to the new state and local policy data (now available for 2006-2008) and to provide deeper information on Freedom in the 50 States 2011, released on June 7, 2011 by the Mercatus Center at GMU.