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FRASER INSIGHT
Issue 69 | Autumn 2023
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Welcome back to Fraser Insight, the Fraser Institute’s U.S. newsletter. This autumn issue of Insight highlights research and programming focused on economic freedom.

The In Focus section, which always showcases in-depth research and analysis, features the latest Economic Freedom of the World Annual Report, where—for the first time ever—Hong Kong is not ranked number one. Singapore grabs the top spot. The U.S. ranks fifth, up from seventh in the 2022 report. The In Focus section also includes reports covering climate change, monetary policy and socialism.

The In Print section, which includes timely commentaries and op-eds, features essays showcasing the creative efforts and outputs of our EFNA Network, along with articles on the minimum wage, education reform, energy supply and climate science.

Finally, our In Context section recaps the annual gathering of our EFNA Network, which convened in Dallas last month, and provides news about the Essential Scholars podcast series.

We encourage you to share Insight with friends and colleagues by inviting them to sign up for Insight here [[link removed]]. Visit our website [[link removed]], which serves as a storehouse for cogent commentary [[link removed]] and in-depth analysis [[link removed]]—all from a free-market perspective. Follow us on X (formerly Twitter) [[link removed]]. Join us on Facebook [[link removed]]. And check out the In Touch section for more contact info.


In Print: Commentary and Review
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EFNA Network Keeps Growing and Sharing the Message [[link removed]]
Fraser Insight
The Fraser Institute’s EFNA Network now enfolds 60 members in 47 U.S. states and territories, Canada, and Mexico. In the past 12 months, Network members have generated 155 media placements in dozens of major statewide and national outlets.

Nazi-Soviet Pact Sealed the Fate of Several Countries [[link removed]]
Fraser Blog
The pact publicly committed Nazi Germany and the USSR to non-aggression. But it was the secret protocols of the pact—denied by the Soviet Union for 50 years—which reshaped the world.

Americans Won’t Accept Swedish-Style Taxes [[link removed]]
Daily Caller
Thirty-one percent of Americans believe socialism is the ideal economic system. In many ways, the poll responses, particularly from younger people, mirror the arguments made by self-described “social democrats” who argue the U.S. should be more like Sweden. But there’s one problem: Americans are highly unlikely to accept Sweden’s level of taxation.

Minimum Wages Hurt the Working Poor [[link removed]]
Ottawa Sun
Adding to the already voluminous literature showing the harmful effects of minimum wages—specifically, its negative effects on employment, concentrated among the least-skilled and least-advantaged workers—are a trio of recent studies.

Training Teachers: Education Courses Are Basically Useless [[link removed]]
Epoch Times
We need excellent teachers, whether they have a Bachelor of Education degree or not. Let’s focus on what works best for students, not on protecting the jobs of education professors.

No Evidence to Support Wild Claims of ‘Global Boiling’ [[link removed]]
Ottawa Sun
Once again, we’re being told the weather patterns we normally associate with summer are signs of climate doom.

Fossil Fuels: A Huge Net Benefit to Humanity [[link removed]]
The Hub
Many politicians have signed pledges to leave fossil fuels in the ground and to ban plastics. Almost never discussed in this context, however, is why coal, petroleum, natural gas, plastic and composite materials were developed in the first place. The economic and environmental benefits of these things are either ignored or simply taken for granted.

Rapid Transition to Low-Carbon World Simply Not Realistic [[link removed]]
Ottawa Sun
Four-fifths of global energy demand is still met by a combination of coal, oil and natural gas.

Ottawa and Washington Wasted Many Billions during COVID [[link removed]]
True North
In both Canada and the United States, the federal government spent a massive amount of money during COVID. A significant portion of this money was mismanaged, poorly targeted, wasteful or simply excessive. Taxpayers in both countries will bear the cost of this fiscal waste for years to come.


In Focus: Research and Analysis
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Economic Freedom of the World 2023 Annual Report [[link removed]]
For the first time in the history of the report, Hong Kong is not ranked number one. New regulatory barriers to entry, limits on employment of foreign labor, and increases in the cost of business drove a decline in its regulatory freedom component. Increased military interference in the rule of law and eroding confidence in judicial independence led to a decline in Hong Kong’s legal system and property rights measures. The top spot is now occupied by Singapore, followed by Hong Kong, Switzerland, New Zealand, the United States, Ireland, Denmark, Australia, the United Kingdom, and Canada. The expectation is that Hong Kong’s score will continue to fall as the Chinese Communist Party continues to suppress economic and political freedom.

Realities of Socialism: Sweden [[link removed]]
Much of what the outside world thinks it knows about the Swedish model is wrong. Sweden had been an open capitalist economy between 1870 and 1970, but then moved in a decid¬edly socialist direction by increasing the size of government, regulations, and taxes. The result was a 20-year period that hurt the economy’s competitiveness, lowered living standards, and ended in the terrible financial crash of the early 1990s. Then came a sharp retreat from socialist policies, and the country implemented reforms that once again moved Sweden back to a broadly successful, capitalist-inclined economy.

Models or Measures of Climate Change: Why Does It Matter? [[link removed]]
The policy implications of the mismatch between model-based and measurement-based estimates of climate warming are fairly obvious. When compared with measurement-based estimates of climate sensitivity, model-based estimates appear to be running “too hot” and, as a consequence, policies to mitigate such changes are themselves likely running “too hot” and overly aggressive. Measurement-based estimates suggest an atmosphere less sensitive to greenhouse-gas enrichment. This would, in turn, suggest that less-aggressive efforts to mitigate greenhouse-gas emissions, perhaps also with longer time-horizons might suffice to protect the world from possible climate change.

Central Bank Forays into Unconventional Monetary Policies [[link removed]]
This paper describes the era of unconventional monetary policies (UMP) and its principal motivations and tenets. The principal instruments of UMP are quantitative easing (QE), which encompasses central bank purchases of government-issued bonds, and private sector debt, such as mortgages, as well as forward guidance. The latter encompasses the public statements made by central bank officials that signal the likely direction of future monetary policy.

The Impracticality of Standardizing ESG Reporting [[link removed]]
A significant challenge when mandating uniform environmental-social-governance (ESG) disclosure regulations and applying them to all public companies is related to implementation difficulties. In particular, identifying ESG materiality (i.e., defining what specific ESG issues are topics for reporting) will inevitably be arbitrary and unsatisfactory to many “stakeholders.” ESG encompasses a broad set of issues including waste and water management, supply-chain management, hiring and compensation, and climate change. Stakeholders’ interests in ESG differ. Hence, so do their views of what is of material interest for corporate disclosure.


In Context: News and Events
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Another Great EFNA Network Conference
EFNA Network partners took center stage at our annual EFNA Network Conference, which was hosted by SMU’s Bridwell Institute for Economic Freedom in Dallas. The conference brought together partner institutions from Hawaii, Texas, Puerto Rico, Arkansas, Ohio, New Hampshire, Michigan, Virginia, Minnesota, California, Alabama, Canada and Mexico. The program featured sessions covering: innovative ways Network members are using the report in research and outreach; the emergence of what’s been called “freedom conservatism”; strategies employed to promote economic freedom in circles of influence; women and economic freedom; the impact of economic freedom at the metro level; ways EFNA data can be leveraged in research; and EFNA 2023, which will be released next month. Find out more about the EFNA Network here [[link removed]]. If you are interested in your organization joining the EFNA Network, contact Alan Dowd (managing director of the Network) at [email protected] [[link removed]].

New Essential Scholars Podcasts Available
Stack up your playlist with a number of new podcasts from our Essential Scholars series, including discussions on Ronald Coase [[link removed]], David Hume [[link removed]] and the Austrian School of Economics [[link removed]].


In Touch: Connect with Us
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To learn more about our research team, visit our senior staff [[link removed]] and senior fellow [[link removed]] pages. We always welcome your feedback at [[email protected]]. To find out more about supporting the Fraser Institute, call (800) 665-3558, ext.568, or donate online [[link removed]].


STAY UP TO DATE
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The Fraser Institute is an independent Canadian public policy research and educational organization with offices in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, and Montreal and ties to a global network of 86 think-tanks. Its mission is to measure, study, and communicate the impact of competitive markets and government intervention on the welfare of individuals. To protect the Institute's independence, it does not accept grants from governments or contracts for research. To find out more, call (800) 665-3558 ext. 590.

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