It’s been more than a quarter century since the Fraser Institute set out to define and measure the concept of economic freedom, a project that culminated in the annual publication of the Economic Freedom of the World index (co-published in the United States by Cato). Since then, we’ve learned a tremendous amount about the contribution of economic freedom to human progress, there’s been an explosion of scholarly literature on the subject, and the term is now commonly used by politicians and international institutions alike.


A new documentary—Economic Freedom in Action: Changing Lives— will air this fall on public television stations and look at how the rise in economic freedom has transformed the lives of hundreds of millions of people around the world. See a trailer of the film below. Join us to see a screening of part of the documentary at a Cato forum on October 16 featuring the Fraser Institute’s founder and former executive director, Michael Walker, and Cato senior fellow Johan Norberg.