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ENDNOTES
| 1 |
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speech delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., on August 28, 1963. Located on the web at http://www.mecca.org/~crights/dream.html. |
| 2 |
See John D. Byars, Robert E. McCormick, and T. Bruce Yandle, Economic Freedom in America.s 50 States: A 1999 Analysis (State Policy Network, 1999). Available at http://freedom.clemson.edu. |
| 3 |
For a review of the international studies, see chapter 2. |
| 4 |
Of course, people migrate for reasons other than economic freedom, for example, to be near friends, to get a better income, or for the weather. In our statistical analysis, we control for the influence on migration of these other factors. |
| 5 |
John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Boston: Belknap Press, 1971, revised 1999). A condensed version of the principle is available online at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Theory_of_Justice. |
| 6 |
For instance, laws disallowing same-sex marriages are a limitation on the right to contract. Laws preventing prostitution or the sale of marijuana are also restrictions on the right to contract. For the sake of convenience and to avoid - controversy about the main objective of this research, we have ignored indicator variables in this realm. In other work underway and incomplete at this time, we are investigating whether, other things the same, there is net migration of people (our numeraire for freedom) into or out of jurisdictions with limitations on the right to contract for sex, drugs, and similar moral strictures. |
| 7 |
The works of Ronald Coase and Richard Posner are often cited as the foundation of the argument that the common
law is efficient. For a concise statement about the history of the common law visit www.friendsoffreedom.com/Writings/CommonLaw.html. On the efficiency of the common law and related issues,
see the discussion in David Friedman's book,
Law's Order: What Economics Has To Do with Law and Why It Matters at
www.daviddfriedman.com/Laws_Order_draft/laws_order_ch_19.htm.
For a capsule summary of the inherent conflicts in trying to ex ante assign a judgment about the freedom features of common law, see the opening statement by
Michael Krauss in "Tort Law, Moral Accountability, and Efficiency: Reflections on the Current Crisis" at www.acton.org/publicat/m_and_m/1999_spr/krauss.html. |
| 8 |
As we noted earlier, our empirical approach of using migration to assess freedom can be applied to this problem to
venture whether damage-award limitations lead to in- or out-migration across states. This project is underway, but incomplete, at this time. |
| 9 |
It turns out, as we discuss below, that this distinction or characterization of tort reform as more or less freedom, while important in its own right, is not very important in the construction of our index. We use a weighting process
to construct the final index, and the judicial sector receives little weight. This owes primarily to the fact that the judicial sector does not vary much across states, at least not as much relative to the other sectors. Accordingly, our judgment here on whether tort reform enhances or reduces economic freedom has almost no impact on the empirical
results. As far as the basic empirical work of this project goes, it matters hardly at all. |
| 10 |
For an interesting aside on Smith as a regulator, see Gary M. Anderson, William F. Shughart II, and Robert D. Tollison, "Adam Smith in the Customhouse," Journal of Political Economy, 93/4 (August, 1985): 740-59. |
| 11 |
The Wisdom of Henry Hazlitt, originally published by the Foundation for Economic Education, 1993, Irvington-on-Hudson, New York. Chapter 35 appeared originally in the June 1956 issue of The Freeman. |
| 12 |
As Friedman might say, "inefficiency compared to what?" Externalities only arise when rights are poorly defined.
Sometimes it is cheaper to bear the inefficient outcome of poorly defined rights than it is to define and enforce the rights. Hence, in some cases, what appears inefficient might be "net efficient." |
   
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