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There is ample evidence that financial market development leads to economic growth. If improving labor rights can be shown to positively influence equity markets, then that, in turn, will lead to economic growth. The finance literature has examined the impact of a broader metric, namely, the Economic Freedom Index, on equity returns worldwide, and the evidence is mixed. This study focuses on one dimension of economic freedom: labor rights. Specifically, the study analyzes the impact of labor rights on national equity market indexes using the Labor Rights Index developed by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the Fraser Institute (FI). Using panel regression analysis for 49 countries (for the OECD Index) and 76 countries (for the FI Index) over the period 1985–2014, the study finds that changes in labor rights have a statistically significant positive impact on equity returns, after controlling for business-cycle effects and time-fixed effects. The study also finds significant differences in the labor–rights–equity returns relationship between developed and less developed economies.

This study aims to examine the impact of economic freedom and corruption on bank stability in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).

This study uses 38 countries in SSA from 2008 to 2019 using system GMM technique.

The authors found that greater economic freedom increases economic efficiency through improving bank stability. Besides this, the authors also find that banks in environments with greater business freedom, financial freedom, trade freedom and investment freedom are less prone to solvency. The results also show that corruption improves bank stability, suggesting evidence of the “grease the wheels” hypothesis.

The results suggest to policymakers that a high economic freedom may be an appropriate policy toward enhancing bank stability. Besides this, the results also suggest to policymakers to prioritize addressing the core issues that encourage corruption to extort bribes.

This study provides insightful discussion on whether economic freedom and its subcomponents and corruption have an effect on bank stability in SSA.

This paper aims to examine the relationship between economic freedom and Islamic rural banks' efficiency in the case of Indonesia.

The study covers 40 Islamic rural banks in 34 Indonesian regions from 2014 to 2020. Tobit regression is utilized to expose the impact of economic freedom on the efficiency of Islamic rural banks, and nonparametric frontier data envelopment analysis is used to acquire banks' technical efficiency.

The findings reveal that overall economic freedom has a strong favorable impact on the efficiency of Islamic rural banks. The study’s breakdown components suggest that business freedom, government spending and investment freedom are favorable indicators, whereas government integrity and tax burden are negative indicators, and all indicators agree with previous studies.

This research can serve as a guideline for Islamic rural bank management in terms of maintaining financial efficiency. The government should think about the ramifications of financial sector liberalization and reforms, according to these findings. When financial intermediaries operate in a less constrained environment, they are more likely to pursue competitive practices that increase their operating rate and other efficiency metrics. Finally, academics might utilize this information to investigate the economic flexibility of Islamic rural banks.

The novelty of this study is in using data envelopment analysis and Tobit regression to identify economic freedom and Islamic rural banks' efficiency. To the best of the authors' knowledge, the study of the role of economic freedom in Islamic rural bank's efficiency is limited, particularly in the context of Indonesia.

The paper examines the relationship between board effectiveness and audit fees for state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Furthermore, given the unique nature of SOEs, the paper assesses country-level influences, such as economic freedom, political democracy and protection of minority shareholders, which can impact board effectiveness and audit fees.

A combination of two-stage and ordinary least squares regression is used to examine the board characteristics-audit fee relationship for SOEs in a multinational setting during the period from 2016 to 2018.

The results indicate that board characteristics that represent a high level of effectiveness are associated with higher audit fees in SOEs. Furthermore, the findings suggest SOE's operating in countries evidencing medium levels of democracy and economic freedom and medium to high levels of protection of minority shareholders may be motivated to reduce agency conflicts by promoting accountability and transparency, thereby demanding increasing levels of corporate governance, monitoring and audit quality, thereby increasing audit fees.

The results provide further support for the OECD (2015) guidelines promoting the use of high-quality external audits in SOEs.

As a result of the scarceness of research in this area, the current study extends the literature by examining the role of corporate governance and audit fees in SOEs, while examining the influence of economic freedom, political democracy and protection of minority shareholders.

Rule of law is essential in reducing corruption in a country. This study aims to investigate the factors contributing to corruption in 41 of the most competitive countries in the Asia-Pacific region by focusing on judicial effectiveness, property rights and government integrity. The moderating role of regulatory quality was also considered in the attempt to explain the association among rule of law and corruption.

This study used pooled ordinary least squares regression and generalized method of moments-dynamic panel for the robustness test on data of 41 Asia-Pacific countries spanning from 2013 to 2021.

Property rights and government integrity were found to be negatively significant in explaining corruption. In contrast, the interaction between rule of law and regulatory quality had a significant positive association with corruption. The findings bring to light Asia-Pacific countries’ need for more effective control of corruption.

The authorities should work towards enhancing the countries’ image as corruption-free nations by creating a stable economic and political environment and preserving macroeconomic stability through strengthened rule of law.

Previous research looked at The Association of Southeast Asian Nations and South Asian countries, but little attention was given to Asia-Pacific countries in examining the relationship between rule of law and corruption.

This paper analyzes the effect of institutional quality and economic freedom on investment and economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).

Focusing on a panel of 27 countries, the study employed the panel fixed and random effect models to analyze data spanning from 2005 to 2018. The study also employed the Wu–Hausman test to determine if the endogeneity problem exists in the model.

The findings of the study show that individually, an improvement in economic freedom stimulates economic growth while the improvement in institutional quality is effective in spurring investment. However, the interaction effect of improvement in institutional quality and economic freedom is the stimulation of both investment and economic growth. The findings are robust to alternative model specifications.

The study implies that for SSA countries to effectively achieve higher investment and economic growth outcomes, there is the need to simultaneously strengthen institutional quality and improve economic freedom. Focusing on either of the factors without the other leads to less desirable growth and investment outcomes.

The study examined the combined influence of institutional quality and economic freedom on investment and growth in SSA. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no study has investigated this in the context of SSA.

The purpose of this study is to examine and identify the predominant themes in the literature on economic freedom. The paper also highlights the key journals, leading authors, top countries and organisations in the literature on economic freedom.

This paper uses the Scopus database to examine 1,512 articles covering the disciplines of economics, finance, business and social sciences from 1942 to 2022. Vosviewer software is used for creating bibliometric networks.

The findings suggest that significant growth in the economic freedom literature has occurred in the last ten years. Considerable attention has been devoted to examining the relationship between economic freedom and growth. The paper also finds that most of the research on economic freedom has been undertaken in the context of developed countries.

This study is one of the first attempts to undertake a bibliometric analysis of economic freedom. The article also highlights the less-researched areas in the literature and thus provides directions for future research.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-09-2023-0690.

This study aims to contribute to the existing literature by empirically investigating the impact of digital competitiveness and technology on corruption under the moderating effect of some cultural and economic control variables and providing evidence on the links between corruption and various cultural dimensions at the country level.

The cross-sectional sample covers 61 countries (41 high-income and 20 lower-income countries) during the 2016–2020 period, and the analysis was carried out for both the full sample and the subsamples.

The results provide clear evidence supporting the hypothesis that digitalisation and technology significantly affect the perceived level of corruption under the moderating role of cultural framework and economic development. Furthermore, the most significant cultural dimensions of corruption are individualism versus collectivism, uncertainty avoidance, long-term orientation and indulgence versus restraint, even if, in some cases, its influence might be felt differently when the results are estimated on subsamples. Thus, in the case of indulgence versus restraint, high-income countries with higher indulgence scores would register higher scores for the corruption perception index and thus a better control of corruption, while for lower-income countries, the more indulgent these countries are, the weaker the corruption control will be. Furthermore, our results validate a powerful and significant correlation between the index of economic freedom and corruption in both digitalisation and technology.

This study may have relevant implications for policymakers who need to recognise the role of digitalisation and technology in the fight against corruption but considering the cultural and economic characteristics specific to each country.

To the authors' knowledge, the relationship between digital competitiveness, technology and corruption within an economic and cultural framework, while highlighting the differences between high-income and lower-income countries, has not been previously documented in the literature. Thus, this article argues that the level of digital competitiveness and the adoption of technology would significantly impact the level of perceived corruption, although this impact could be felt differently by countries in the high-income category compared to countries in the lower-level income category.

This paper aims to study the impact of economic freedom and some key macroeconomic variables on the foreign direct investment (FDI) inflow in Brazil.

An econometric model is developed that includes FDI inflow as the dependent variable and macroeconomic variables such as the output, current account balance, the real exchange rate, openness and economic freedom as explanatory variables. Annual time series data from 1995 to 2022 is used. Before carrying out the estimation, the time series properties of the data are diagnosed using unit root tests and cointegration tests. Since the data series were found to be stationary in the first difference form and the variables in the model were cointegrated, an error correction model is developed and estimated.

The findings demonstrate that the size of the market (gross domestic product), current account balance and the economic freedom index significantly influence FDI inflow to Brazil. Although the signs of openness and the real exchange rate align with theoretical expectations, they do not attain statistical significance.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first formal study on the impact of economic freedom on the FDI inflow in Brazil. The finding of this study adds value to the understanding of FDI dynamics in Brazil, highlighting the critical role of economic freedom and market size in attracting foreign investment.