Political Systems, Regime Memory, and Economic Freedom

We expand on the economic research about regime types, culture, institutions, and economic freedom, with the development of a unique measure of regime memory and examine the generational effect of past regimes on a country’s level of economic freedom. Using a panel of 144 countries between 1970-2015 we follow the literature and argue that institutions can be fast and slow-moving. We find evidence that regime memory promotes improvements in (discourages) economic freedom for countries that are historically democratic (autocratic).