International Finance

7 Pages 1821 Words

Global Economic Freedom is an issue that we as conscious business people should be aware of. It is not enough just to know the rules and laws that govern the economic system in one’s own country. With the continued expansion in global business it is almost certain that a business dealing with foreign countries will need to have a general idea about the foreign countries economic system and the general rules and laws that govern that economic system. Depending on the country’s economic system, whether it is free or not, can have a substantial impact on whether a business can be profitable in a foreign country and therefore will have an influence over whether a company operates or has business relations in a specific country.
With this in mind I will discuss what Economic Freedom is and will also examine the national economies of the United Kingdom, which is ranked economically free at #7, and Iran, which is ranked economically repressed at #151. I will examine these countries by comparing and contrasting the two to determine why the United Kingdom is economically free and why Iran is not economically free.
Economic Freedom is defined by the Wall Street Journal as “the difference between financial poverty and financial prosperity.” An easy way to understand this concept, as illustrated by the Wall Street Journal, is to look at the Gross Domestic Product per-capita incomes of the countries in question and compare the two. According to the article “Who’s Free, Who’s Not” in the November 1, 2000 issue of the Wall Street Journal, a repressed economic country’s GDP per-capita income is around $2,800 per year compared to the GDP per-capita income of an economically free country, which is around $21,200 per year. If we look at the countries under examination we see that the United Kingdom has a per-capita income of $20,237. Comparing this number against Iran’s per-capita income of $1,275, we can see that the...