EXAMINING FRIEDMAN HYPOTHESIS ON POLITICAL,CIVIL AND ECONOMIC FREEDOM FOR SAARC COUNTRIES: A DYNAMIC PANEL DATA ANALYSIS

This paper empirically examines the Friedman hypothesis on political, civil and economic freedom that, a country can have a high degree of civil freedom, and a high degree of economic freedom without any political freedom, but can not have any political freedom if it does not have some degree of civil and economic freedom. Using panel data of five SAARC countries over the period 1995-2011, the dynamic panel data econometric techniques and Granger-causality tests validated the Friedman hypothesis regarding economic and political freedom, but regarding civil and political freedom the reverse is found true. The estimates of the empirical model using UECM show that economic freedom has significant short-run and long-run effects in improving the political freedom in the SAARC region.