A note on economic freedom and political ideology

Within the field of public economics, there is the perception that Republicans are associated with ‘small government’ and Democrats with ‘big government’. We test this notion by examining whether economic freedom is affected when a single party is in control of the state legislature. We find no link between party control and our main economic freedom indicator, but we do find a positive link between Republican control and the taxation component of economic freedom, suggesting a Republican legislature leads to lower taxation.