Earlier this month, I shared some research about the economic cost of ambiguous laws, which I called clutter.

Today’s column will do something similar, except the term used will be “anti-competitive market distortions.”

Here’s a visual from a new report by the Growth Commission.

The authors (13 economists from all over the world) explain that bad government policies create distortions that make hinder growth and dynamism.

The report measures the impact of these distortions and also ranks the world’s 20 most-cluttered and least-cluttered economies.

Here are the most laissez-faire nations. The chart is confusing because countries are listed based on their 2010 scores. But if you look at the 2019 scores in Appendix B, the top-3 nations are Singapore, New Zealand, and Denmark (some of you may be surprised by Denmark, but this confirms my assertions that Nordic countries are very pro-market when looking at variables other than fiscal policy).

Based on Appendix B, the United States is #7, which is an improvement compared to 2010. Though, as the authors note, the U.S. score is “essentially unchanged” while other countries dropped.

By the way, I’m not surprised to Canada dropping the most. Another grim legacy of Justin Trudeau.

Now let’s look at the worst nations (at least among the ones that were ranked since hellholes such as Cuba, North Korea, and Venezuela otherwise would be the worst of the worst). In this case, the authors did rank nations based on 2019 scores, so no need for any mental gymnastics.

Chad wins the booby prize, followed by Madagascar and Bolivia.

Though Appendix B lists Chad, Zimbabwe, and Madagascar as the three worst, so the report could still use a bit of copy-editing.

I’ll close with four final observations.

1. The report speculates that Trump’s protectionist policies may have a positive effect because they will encourage nations to get rid of their “anti-competitive market distortions.” I hope that is correct, but I’m very skeptical.
2. Ukraine isn’t actually one of the 20-worst nations if you look at Appendix B, but it is still very bad, which is why I hope western nations eventually will demand radical pro-market reforms as a price of economic and military aid.
3. Argentina was also one of the worst nations based on 2019 scores, ranking only a few spots above Ukraine. This underscores the huge economic barriers that Javier Milei needs to overcome to help his country prosper.
4. The report lists 16 Findings, one of which is that nations should use “mutual recognition” for international economic relations to enhance regulatory competition. My only complaint is that this should have been the #1 finding.

P.S. I should do a new version of my Laissez-Faire Index. I’m guessing it will track closely with the results of this report.