This is a regression analysis of the Economic Freedom Index published every year by the Heritage Foundation. This project is for my Algorithms class, in partial fulfillment of my requirements for the degree of master of science in data journalism at Columbia.

There are two files in here: one is a Jupyter notebook containing the linear regression model and two, an R file containing the fixed-effects model. This is done so because of technical difficulties to run a fixed-effects model using Python and to give more users wider access to the models.

Both files use the CSV file provided for in raw_data directory.

The data measures the so-called "economic freedom" of select countries. More information about the index can be read here. The index is a closely watched report by policymakers and other observers to gauge how open/liberalize a country is to investors, businesses and traders.

For this repository, we used the subindex "Business Freedom" as the dependent variable and ran other subindices such as Judicial Effectiveness and Property Rights as independent variables in a regression. The goal is to assess which among these variables best determine business freedom across territories.

Prinz Magtulis, [email protected]

Comments and suggestions are always welcome! All rights reserved.