Twenty years after the revolutions ofCentral and Eastern Europe, the Arab Spring is again raisingsome fundamental questions about the place of freedom andentitlement in development. Depending on the balance betweenfree choices and more coerced decisions, individualopportunities to learn, own, work, save, invest, trade,protect, and so forth could vary greatly across countriesand over time. Reviewing the economic performance of morethan 100 countries over the past 30 years, new empiricalevidence tends to support the idea that economic freedom andcivil and political liberties are the root causes of whycertain countries achieve and sustain better economicoutcomes. In contrast, entitlement rights do not seem tohave any significant effects on long-term per capita income,except for a possible negative effect. These results tend tosupport earlier findings that, beyond core functions ofgovernment responsibility (including the protection ofliberty itself), the expansion of the state to provide forvarious entitlements (including so-called economic, social,and cultural rights) may not make people richer in the longrun; it may even make them poorer.
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