Daily Archives: April 21, 2017

Most of us sympathize with the basic concept of religious freedom, but few would have imagined that the free exercise of religion, as spelled out in the First Amendment, requires a state to cut a check to support a church. Thats exactly what will happen if a case argued before the Supreme Court today goes the way religious activists are hoping.

The newest Supreme Court justice, Neil Gorsuch, is seen as sympathetic to religious freedom arguments.

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The case, Trinity Lutheran Church v. Comer, involves a church in Missouri that applied for a grant from the state to build a playground. The government denied the grant request, citing a state law forbidding the use of public money to support churches. The church sued, claiming that the denial somehow violates its free exercise rights under the First Amendment.

With the Trinity Lutheran case, we see the astonishing results of modern efforts to expand the definition of religious freedom. We often hear that activist religious groups and the politicians they support are seeking to defend the concept of religious liberty, but in fact what they are doing is redefining it, transforming it into something far beyond its historical meaning.

The church's argument in Trinity Lutheran follows the same train of logic that would suggest religious freedom allows merchants to refuse service to those with whom they disagree. Only in modern times have such arguments gotten any traction. With the new addition of the conservative Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, many observers believe such claims of religious liberty will win the day in Trinity Lutheran this term and in other cases in years to come.

The slippery slope leading to the modern redefinition of religious liberty began in 1993, with passage of the deceptively named Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), a statute that did more to expand the definition of religious liberty than restore it. RFRA changed the legal standard for analyzing religious freedom claims, the result being that governmental regulations and requirements can now be struck down if a citizen claims that the action offends his or her sincerely held religious beliefs.

Since then, with many laws also being passed at the state level that mirror RFRA, weve seen religious parties get increasingly bold in their efforts to use claims of religious freedom to discriminate and to impose their religious standards on others. In the 2014 Hobby Lobby case, we saw a corporationnot even a real human, but a for-profit corporate entity!claim religious freedom to exempt itself from public health laws requiring insurance coverage for its employees. With a subsequent case we saw a religious group object to simply filing a piece of paper with the government to claim the religious exemption.

And of course, there have been the innumerable instances where county clerks refuse to do their job in simply issuing marriage licenses, where bakeries refuse to bake cakes for gay couples, and where florists refuse to do their jobs because their customers are gay or atheist. All in the name of religious freedom.

In all of this, there is little mention that these claims of religious freedom, or at least their widespread use, are a relatively new trend. When the framers said no law shall be made prohibiting the free exercise of religion, its hard to imagine that they saw those words as requiring government to subsidize a new playground for a religious school. Trinity Lutheran Churchs religious freedom is firmly intact without a taxpayer-funded playground.

Nevertheless, religious activists know that cries of "religious freedom" resonate with Americans, most of whom have no idea that the concept has been expanded to perverse levels. When free exercise of religion is defined as allowing churches to receive tax dollarsand as allowing merchants to deny members of the public services based on religious discriminationthings have gone way too far.

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The New 'Religious Freedom' Is a Boon for Churches - Psychology Today (blog)

Top leadership sources on Capitol Hill warn that it's premature to call this a "breakthrough" because (a) the rumoredcompromise hasn't been agreed upon by the relevant parties, (b) there is no legislative language to reflect its potential content at this point, and (c) the full GOP conference has yet to discuss it -- though it will likely come up at length during an already-planned conference call this weekend. The overall message seems to be, "there has been significant progress, but everyone hold your horses for now." It's almost as if senior Republicans aren't eager to raise expectations or erect any empty deadlinesfor some reason. The Trump White House is reportedly urging the House to hold a vote on whatever plan emerges next week, but based on conversations I've had this afternoon, this feelsroughly accurate:

Setting aside questions of timing and logistical X's and O's, thepolicy rumblings indicate that a new bill wouldbe a modifiedvariation of the original American Health Care Act (AHCA), with most of its core provisions intact. It's unclear how many of theeleventh-hour additions that discussed astacked-ons to the legislation during the last, failed legislative push will carry over to the new bill. Here is the core ofthe would-be bargain, which centers around the option for states to seek waivers to some of Obamacare's mandates and regulations:

So states would be able to ask the federal government for exemptions to current top-down federalrequirements on "essential health benefits" and the so-called "community rating" mandate under which insurers are barred from charging patients with pre-existing conditions higher rates than healthier consumers. In order to be granted waivers, states would be required to demonstrate that they are pursing themin the interest of lowering costs or increasing coverage. They would also be required to help protect sicker citizens with pre-existing conditions who may find themselves priced out of the general market either by setting up and subsidizing a state-level "high risk pool," or participating in a federal one. Theoriginal AHCA allocated about $100 billion for this purpose, and an additional $15 billion stabilization fund has been floated to help provide more immediate relief.

Supporters of these waivers would argue that each state would have the flexibility to pursue the best option for their residents, and that burdening insurers with fewer costly mandates will guarantee lower premiums and an increased array of choices for many. Two of Obamacare'sfundamental flaws are relentlessly rising rates and severely contracting coverage options, which go hand in hand, and aregetting worse. Critics of the idea object that scaling back EHBs would result in less comprehensive plans for too many people, and that while people with pre-existing conditions would technically be protected, the potential scrubbing of "community rating" regulations in some states could make coverage totally unaffordable for that population. That's why high risk pools are such a critical component of the GOP idea.

Politically, Democrats will argue that the new bill is worse than the original TrumpCare because of "reduced protections" that may hang patients with pre-existing conditions out to dry. Republicans would need to credibly counter that the high risk pools are adequate mechanisms to solve that market failure while arguing that flexibility on the comprehensiveness of plans will provide younger and healthier Americans will have more and cheaper options than exist under the sputtering status quo. Will the GOP manage to unify behind this compromise, if it's finally reached? Keep a close eye on the moderates especially.If the infighting subsides, will they be able to sell the bill to a skeptical public? And when could they realistically pull this together for a floor vote? I'll leave you withPaul Ryan's framing of the current process:

AbortionistClaims Pro-Lifers Are Trying to Prevent Abortion of Black Babies Because They Want More White Babies?

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Hmm: House Freedom Caucus, Moderates Closing in on Healthcare Compromise? - Townhall

April 20, 2017 by Ed Dolan

Economists, libertarian economists included, love to measure things. The Human Freedom Index (HFI) from the Cato Institute is a case in point. Its authors have assembled dozens of indicators of personal and economic freedom. They invite interested researchers to use them to explore the complex ways in which freedom influences, and can be influenced by, political regimes, economic development, and the whole range of indicators of human well-being.

I am happy to accept the invitation. This post, the first of a series, will take a first look at what we can learn from the data about the relationships among freedom, prosperity, and government. The relationships turn out to be not quite as simple as many libertarians might think.

The Human Freedom Index consists of two parts. One is the Economic Freedom Index (EFI) from the Fraser Institute, which includes measures of the size of government, protection of property rights, sound money, freedom of international trade, and regulation. The other is Catos own Personal Freedom Index (PFI), which includes measures of rule of law, freedom of movement and assembly, personal safety and security, freedom of information, and freedom of personal relationships. The Cato and Fraser links provide detailed descriptions of the two indexes.

In order to explore the way freedom influences other aspects of human well-being, I will draw on a third data set, the Legatum Prosperity Index (LPI) from the Legatum Institute. The LPI includes data on nine pillars of prosperity, including the economy, business environment, governance, personal freedom, health, safety and security, education, social capital, and environmental quality.

The EFI and PFI cover 160 countries and the LPI 149 countries. In this post I will use the set of 143 countries for which data are available in all three indexes. The Cato, Fraser, and Legatum links above provide detailed methodological information.

We can begin by confirming a result reported in the introduction to the Cato Human Freedom Index, namely, that economic freedom and personal freedom are closely related. Expressing both indexes on a scale of zero to ten, with ten indicating maximum freedom, a scatterplot of the two indexes looks like this:

The correlation coefficient between EFI and PFI for the 143 countries in the joint Cato-Legatum sample is 0.53not an especially tight relationship, but statistically significant. The slope of the trend line is 0.91, meaning that each one-point increase in the EFI score is associated with a 0.91 point increase in the PFI score.

The relationship between economic and personal freedom is partly explained by the fact that both are positively associated with income. As the next chart shows, that relationship is nonlinear for both measures of freedom. The log of real GDP per capita, expressed in U.S. dollars at purchasing power parity, provides a reasonably good fit. The correlation coefficients are 0.51 for log GDP and the personal freedom index, and 0.56 for log GDP and the economic freedom index.

Using multiple regression analysis, we can recalculate the relationship between economic freedom and personal freedom in a way that controls for their common relationship to GDP. Taking GDP into account increases the correlation coefficient between the two aspects of freedom from 0.53 to 0.59, but it also reduces the slope of the relationship between PFI and EFI. Each one-point increase in EFI is now associated with a 0.61 point increase in the PFI rather than the 0.91 point increase that was estimated without including GDP. All of these results are statistically significant at a 0.01 level of confidence.

So far, so good. We have found that personal freedom and economic freedom are positively associated with each other, and that both freedom indexes are positively associated with prosperity as measured by real GDP per capita. Good libertarians should expect these results and be gratified to find them confirmed.

The previous section showed that economic and personal freedom are positively related to prosperity as measured by GDP per capita, but prosperity is more than GDP. Libertarians tend to see freedom as also conducive to other aspects of human well-being, such as education, health, and personal safety.

There are many measures of prosperity and well-being available. I hope to be able to explore several of them and their relationships to human freedom in future posts. In this introductory treatment, however, I will limit myself to the education, health, and personal security indicators from the Legatum Prosperity Index. In what follows, I will refer to the average of these three Legatum pillars as the education-health-safety index, or EHS, measured on a scale of 1 to 100. (By and large, the results reported below also hold for each of the three indicators considered separately, although some of the individual coefficients are not statistically significant.)

We can begin, as before, with a simple scatterplot of EHS and HFI:

As the chart shows, the relationship between the two variables is positive and strong. The correlation coefficient of EHS and HFI is 0.76. Each of the individual freedom components also correlates positively with EHS, although not quite so strongly: 0.68 for economic freedom and 0.67 for personal freedom.

Since EHS, HFI, and GDP per capita all correlate strongly with per capita GDP, we need to be cautious about interpreting the simple correlation coefficients. For example, it could be that the apparent correlation of EHS with EFI simply reflects the fact that rich countries tend to have good schools, hospitals, and police forces, but that people in rich countries that are free live no better than those in rich countries that are unfree.

We can, again, set our minds at rest by using multiple regression to sort out the individual contributions of each variable. A regression of EHS on EFI, PFI, and the log of GDP per capita yields a strikingly strong result. The overall correlation of EHS and the three variables is an impressive 0.91. Using the coefficient of determination, R2, we can interpret that result as meaning that the three variables jointly explain 83 percent of the variation in education, health, and safety among countries. The contributions of each of the individual independent variables are positive and strongly statistically significant.

It seems, then, that human freedom in both its economic and personal manifestations contributes positively to human well-being as measured by data on education, health, and personal safetyanother result sure to please libertarian readers.

Things get more interesting when we dig a little deeper into the reported linkages between personal and economic freedom by breaking the Fraser Institutes EFI down into its separate components: size of government, protection of property rights, sound money, freedom of international trade, and regulation. When we look at the simple correlations between the personal freedom index and the EFI components, we find they are all are positive, as expected, except that for the size of government (SoG), which is negative. The correlation of SoG with the personal freedom index is -0.16. Remember that for all components of the EFI, a higher value means more freedom, so the negative coefficient means that a larger government is associated with greater freedom. That is not what most libertarians would expect. Is this just an anomaly or a real statistical regularity?

As a first step toward answering this question, we need to see just what the SoG indicator really measures. SoG is itself a composite derived by averaging four subcomponents: government consumption expenditures, government transfers, marginal tax rates, and something called government enterprise and investment (GEI), which is Frasers name for the ratio of a countrys government investment to its total investment. Examining these subcomponents uncovers two problems.

One is that only the government consumption indicator is available for all countries. Data on transfers, tax rates, and government investment are missing in several cases. Where data are missing, the SoG measure is the average of the components for which there are data. This approach to handling missing data degrades the statistical power of the SoG indicator as a whole.

By analogy, suppose that we want to assess the health risks facing a citys residents using their body mass index (BMI), their gender, and their age. To measure BMI, we need to know each persons height and weight, but suppose we are missing the data on weight for some individuals. Rather than leaving those people out of the sample, we could estimate their weight by using the average weight for a person of a given height, age, and gender. However, that procedure would inevitably make our assessment of health risks less statistically reliable than it would be if we had had complete data for everyone in our sample.

The second problem with SoG is that its GEI subcomponent has a strong negative correlation with the other three subcomponentsgovernment consumption, transfers, and tax rates. Also, if we look at the relationships of the SoG subcomponents with independent variables, such as GDP, GDP growth, health, education, and safety, we find that the correlations for GEI are positive whereas those for the other components are negative. Creating a composite indicator out of subcomponents that correlate negatively with one another and that have opposite relationships to independent variables is a statistically dubious procedure.

Again resorting to analogy, suppose we want to devise a composite indicator of heating efficiency for residential buildings. We know that the size of a buildings windows and the thickness of its walls are relevant variables, but how to combine them? Simply averaging the thickness of the walls of each building and the area of its windows would not give us a reasonable composite indicator, since the two variables have opposite effects on heating efficiency. A house with small windows and thick walls could have the same score as one with large windows and thin walls, even though the former would be far more efficient than the latter. Instead, either we should treat windows and walls as separate variables in a multivariate analysis, or, if it is important to have a single compound indicator, we should reverse the sign on window area before combining it with wall thickness.

My guess is that the people at Fraser who created the economic freedom index never thought about this problem. More likely, they used ideological rather than statistical criteria in formulating the SoG indicator. They probably assumed, a priori, that higher taxes, more government consumption, more transfers, and more government investment all make us less free, and accordingly, assumed that an average of the four would make a good measure of the size of government for their economic freedom index. The result is statistical mush.

None of this means that the size of government is unimportant. It suggests, instead, that Frasers SoG indicator is not a statistically sound measure of the size of government. We can check that by comparing SoG with a simpler measure based on the ratio of total government expenditures to GDP, which we will abbreviate as SGOV. The required data are available for all countries in our sample from the IMF World Economic Outlook database. For easier comparison with SoG and with other components of the EFI, I express SGOV on a scale of 0 to 10, with 10 indicating the smallest government. (Specifically, if G is the ratio of government expenditure to GDP as expressed by the IMF on a scale of 0 to 100, then SGOV = (100-G)/10.)

The SGOV indicator turns out to have much more explanatory power than Frasers SoG. The correlation of SGOV with the log of GDP per capita is -0.48, compared with -0.25 for SoG. Both correlations suggest that higher levels of GDP are associated with larger government sectors and both coefficients are statistically significant, but the association is stronger for SGOV, derived from the simple ratio of government expenditure to GDP, than for Frasers original SoG indicator.

Turning to the personal freedom index, the simple correlation of SGOV with PFI is -0.39, compared to 0.16 for SoG. Both indicators suggest that personal freedom increases as the size of government increases, but the coefficient for SGOV is larger, and it is statistically significant, whereas that for SoG is not. Here are scatter plots for the two measures of the size of government vs. the personal freedom index:

As in earlier cases, we should not rely solely on the simple correlation, which is attributable in part to the fact that both the size of government and personal freedom correlate strongly with GDP per capita. We can get a more accurate picture by using a multiple regression to control for GDP. A regression of PFI on SGOV and the log of GDP per capita shows a correlation of 0.53, with all coefficients significant at the 0.01 level. The slope estimate indicates that on average, a one point decrease in SGOV is (that is, a one-point movement toward larger government) is, on average, associated with a quarter-point increase in personal freedom.

As a further test of the relative statistical power of the two indicators, I ran a multiple regression of PFI on both SGOV and SoG, plus the log of GDP per capita. When both measures of the size of government were included, the relation of SGOV to PFI was positive and statistically significant but SoG had no statistically significant relation to PFI.

Finally, I got similar results when I used the EHS measure of prosperity as the independent variable. The correlation coefficient for EHS and SoG is -0.18, indicating a tendency for larger government sectors to be associated with greater prosperity, but the absolute value of the coefficient is too small to be statistically significant. The correlation of EHS with SGOV is -0.48. In this case, the value of the coefficient is statistically significant and the negative sign again indicates a tendency for countries with larger governments to have higher scores for education, health, and personal safety. Here are the scatterplots:

As before, we can refine the results from the simple correlations using a multiple regression, controlling for GDP per capita. Doing so shows that SGOV, the ratio of government to GDP, has a negative and statistically significant association with EHS, showing that larger government is associated with higher levels of education, health, and personal safety. However, SoG, Frasers size-of-government measure, has no statistically significant association with EHS.

Our statistical investigations lead to two substantive conclusions:

These findings suggest that libertarians need to do some further thinking about Our Enemy, the State, as Albert Jay Nock expressed it in the title of his classic book.

On a purely technical level, the analysis also suggests that the authors of the Fraser Institutes economic freedom index need to rethink their size-of-government indicator, which appears to me to have serious methodological flaws that undermine its statistical value. A simpler indicator, based on the ratio of government expenditures to GDP, has significantly greater explanatory power in a variety of circumstances.

More broadly, we need think in a more nuanced way about the potential threat that government poses to freedom and prosperity. Size of government alone is an inadequate measure of the threat. The results we have reported do not just hold for a few outliers like France and Sweden that are relatively free and prosperous despite having large governments. Rather, an association of freedom and prosperity with large governments is a general tendency that holds across countries at all levels of income and in all parts of the world.

In my next post in this series, I will argue that we can better understand the relationships among freedom, prosperity, and government if we look at data on the quality of government, not just its size.

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Freedom, Prosperity, and Big Government - Niskanen Center (press release) (blog)

Religious freedom in the American context has two meanings. One is that government will not promote religion or, as the 1st Amendment puts it, that there will be no law respecting an establishment of religion.

But the 1st Amendment also protects the free exercise of religion. That means citizens cant be penalized for practicing their faith, including, the Supreme Court has ruled, when it comes to the allocation of government benefits.

On Wednesday the court struggled with a case originating on a preschool playground in which those two definitions of religious freedom seemed to pull in different directions.

Trinity Lutheran Church in Columbia, Mo., operates the Learning Center, a day-care and preschool program. It applied for a state program that uses recycled tires to rubberize the surface of childrens playgrounds. But the churchs grant application was rejected by the state Department of Natural Resources because of a provision in Missouris constitution, similar to that in some other states, that forbids the expenditure of state funds in aid of any church, sect or denomination of religion. Nonreligious nonprofit organizations, however, were eligible for the grants.

According to the churchs lawyer, Missouri excluded the Learning Center from a program that provides a safer playground for children solely because the preschool is operated by a church rather than a secular not-for-profit. That, he told the court, amounted to admitted discrimination against religion in violation of the 1st Amendments free exercise clause.

The church received a sympathetic hearing from several justices across the ideological spectrum. Justice Elena Kagan called Missouris refusal to consider the churchs application a clear burden on a constitutional right." Justice Stephen Breyer asked the lawyer for Missouri whether, if a state could withhold grants from a church for playground safety, it could also deny churches police and fire protection suggesting that the answer was no.

But if the court rules for the church, it needs to do so narrowly. One way to do that would be to construe Missouris ban on the use of state funds in aid of any church, sect or denomination of religion to apply to worship and religious instruction but not to secular services like police and fire protection or the upgrading of playgrounds.

A ruling limited to the facts of this case would be an exercise in judicial modesty. It also would reassure those who have worried that a victory for the church in this case would make it easier to adopt a program of vouchers for religious schools in states with constitutional provisions such as Missouris.

We share that concern. This page has opposed private-school vouchers for religious and non-religious schools alike because they siphon resources from public schools that are required to educate all children. The best way to avoid constitutional questions about vouchers is not to introduce such programs in the first place.

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'Freedom of religion' collides with 'freedom from religion' on a Missouri playground - Los Angeles Times

A man smokes his first cigarette after fleeing Mosul, Iraq / Getty Images

BY: Elizabeth Harrington April 20, 2017 1:26 pm

Iraqis living under oppression from the Islamic State defiedthe barbaric terrorist group by smoking cigarettes.

To residents of Badoosh, a village in northern Iraq that was liberated just over a week ago, "smoking equals freedom."

New York Times correspondent Rukmini Callimachi encountered many residents who said they would conceal their cigarette smoking from ISIS terrorists, which would cut off fingers for violating the group's smoking ban.

Callimachi shared on Twitter the story of a cow herder in Badoosh who is celebrating the freedom to smoke again since the village was liberated.

"Yesterday, my team made it to the furthest point I've gone northwest of Mosul to the locality of Badoosh, where we interviewed residents," Callimachi said. "I noticed that everywhere we went in Badoosh, residents were wearing' packs of cigarettes, like this gentleman. His name is Mohamed Ahmed Saleh, and he's a cow herder, and he asked my colleague to light his cigarette when we got out of the car."

"His village near Badoosh was liberated 10 days ago [and] he launched into a diatribe about IS [and] how happy he is to be able to smoke again," she said.

Callimachi said that although she is a "California girl through and through" who hates secondhand smoke, she said it was "obvious that smoking for this man [equals] freedom."

"That's when Mohamed began describing the lengths he took to find cigarettes under ISIS [and] the thrill it gave him to break their rules," she said.

The Iraqis were smoking Akhtamar Classics, whichsport a logo similar to the Statue of Liberty. Callimachi reported that the Armenian cigarette brandcost 63 cents before ISIS spiked the cost to $17.

"He couldn't afford $17," she said. "So he [and four] friends pooled money to buy [one] pack of 20 cigarettes."

The Iraqis brokethe cigarettes into pieces to make themlast longer and wentto great lengths to hide their smoking from ISIS.

"He said he and his buddies used to go out with their cows into the fields and smoke covering their faces like this to reduce the smoke," Callimachi said. "Then they used to brush their teeth [and] spritz each other with perfume before heading back. At a checkpoint he said an ISIS guy sniffed him."

Callimachi said Mohamed chain-smoked four packs the day ISIS left and now "proudly wears his smokes."

"I just like to walk around holding it in my hand [because] I can," Mohamed said.

"I'm addicted," said another villager. "But I also wanted to do it to show resistance."

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'Smoking Equals Freedom' to Iraqis Liberated From ISIS ... - Washington Free Beacon

2017-04-20 23:10

James de Villiers, News24

Cape Town Lobby group SaveSA on Thursday distanced itself from the "Freedom Movement which opposition parties created to ensure President Jacob Zuma is removed from office.

"We do not regard political parties as part of civil society and believe that authentic civil society movements should not involve political parties in any shape or form," SaveSA said in a statement.

Organised civil society and political parties had different roles to play.

The Freedom Movement was announced at the Hector Pietersen memorial museum on Thursday. It consists of the DA, UDM, Cope, IFP, ACDP and EFF. Union federation Fedusa and Solidarity joined the formation. Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu voiced his support on Twitter.

It would stage a demonstration against Zuma at Freedom Park, Pretoria, on April 27.

24.com encourages commentary submitted via MyNews24. Contributions of 200 words or more will be considered for publication.

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SaveSA distances itself from 'Freedom Movement' - News24

April 20, 2017 Author Prof Thorsten Lehnert. Credit: Michel Brumat / University of Luxembourg

In one of the first studies to assess the relationship between a country's Press Freedom Index and its stock market characteristics, researchers at the University of Luxembourg have highlighted how press freedom is linked to stock market volatility, and why this is beneficial for the overall economy.

In their paper "Press Freedom and Jumps in Stock Prices" published in Economic Systems, Prof. Thorsten Lehnert and PhD candidate Sara Abed Masror Khah from the Luxembourg School of Finance conclude that the free circulation of information in a country can lead to more volatile stock prices due to more frequent price jumps. At the same time however, countries with greater press freedom are known to experience more economic growth.

The authors analysed the relationship between press freedom, measured by the Press Freedom Index (PFI) published annually by Reporters without Borders, and stock market characteristics, using data from a balanced panel of 50 countries.

In "free" environments, news and information are broadly available and are picked up immediately by markets. This leads economic agents, such as households, companies, investors or politicians, to become better processors of information. On the other hand, in "unfree" environments, in which governments usually have tight control on the media, economic news can be withheld or their dissemination delayed leading to fewer sudden impacts on the stock market.

Policymakers "should encourage independent and fair press"

However, press restriction is not in fact positive for the overall economy. As Prof. Lehnert explains: "Press freedom in a country contributes positively to what economists would call the 'good' volatility of stock markets. This refers for instance to conditions that make it advantageous for firms to take risks that is necessary to greater economic growth. This is why it should certainly not be understood as an argument to reduce the freedom of press. On the contrary, freedom of press creates more welfare and economic growth."

Prof. Lehnert and Sara Abed Masror Khah also refer to an interesting relationship between press freedom and economic crises. Several member states of the European Union have seen their PFI ranking drop significantly since the 2008 financial crisis. Greece, for example, dropped 64 places between 2009 and 2013, when it fell on the 99th position of 180 countries assessed. Hungary, too, saw its PFI drop by 41 places, from 25 in 2009 to 64 in 2013. Luxembourg, on the other hand, a politically stable country, which was less affected by the crisis, initially ranked 20th in 2009, but steadily improved its ranking to 4th place in 2013.

"Despite creating some volatility on stock markets, a free press is not only good for the overall economy but is an essential part of democratic societies and policymakers should encourage an independent and fair press", concludes Prof. Lehnert.

Explore further: New approach predicts price trends in the stock options market

More information: Sara Abed Masrorkhah et al, Press freedom and jumps in stock prices, Economic Systems (2017). DOI: 10.1016/j.ecosys.2016.05.009

A new research paper from the University of Luxembourg outlines a novel method to identify how options traders exploit mutual fund non-fundamental price pressure on aggregate stock prices.

Researchers at the University of Missouri have found that citizens of countries with press freedom tend to be much happier than citizens of countries without free presses.

Reporters Without Borders on Wednesday launched a new indicator measuring global press freedom by aggregating the scores of its annual index, from perennial table-topping Finland to worst offenders Eritrea.

(PhysOrg.com) -- The current financial crisis may reduce economic freedom as governments are likely increase intervention in a bid to protect their own economies - according to a study in Pacific Focus published by Wiley-Blackwell. ...

A new study in the journal Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice examines how entrepreneurial activity and level of employment in U.S. service industries respond to changes in the degree of economic freedom among states. Researchers ...

The researchers found that stock prices increase when central bank tone becomes more positive and decrease when the tone becomes more negative. Positive tone changes are also associated with increasing bond yields, lower ...

Is feeding the world's human population compatible with protecting the biological diversity of the planet?

Analysis of Egyptian fossils has identified a new species of extinct carnivorous mammals called hyaenodonts, according to a study published April 19, 2017 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Matthew Borths from Ohio University, ...

A large set of tracks made by archosauromorphs in the Pyrenees mountain range may include a new type of footprint made by reptiles that lived 247 million years ago, according to a study published April 19, 2017 in the open-access ...

When we make a decision about whether or not to cooperate with someone, we usually base our decision on past experienceshow has this person behaved in the past?and on future reciprocitywill they return the favor?and ...

(Phys.org)A trio of researchers, two with the University of North Carolina and the other with the University of Kentucky, has conducted two kinds of experiments with results suggesting that income inequality in a society ...

Four hundred and thirty million years ago, long before the evolution of barracudas or sharks, a different kind of predator stalked the primordial seas. The original sea monsters were eurypteridsbetter known as sea scorpions.

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Research underlines positive impact of press freedom on stock markets - Phys.Org