Beginning in 1986, Michael Walker of the Fraser Institute and Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman hosted a series of conferences that focused on the measurement of economic freedom. Several other leading scholars, including Nobel Prize winners Gary Becker and Douglass North, also participated in the series. Six meetings were held during the period from 1986 to 1994, and dozens of papers were presented and several approaches were analyzed.1 Eventually, these conferences led to the development of the Economic Freedom of the World (EFW) index. The index, currently available for 123 countries, measures the consistency of a nation’s policies and institutions with economic freedom.