Though I was surprised to learn that William Easterly participated in the latest edition of the Economic Freedom of the World report, his chapter contains few surprises. In brief, he writes:

– Jeff Sachs and the poverty trap argument are a trip back to the 1950s and 60s.
– The Millennium Development Goals involve a lot of central planning.
– Poor countries have grown faster than rich ones.
– Economic freedom, GDP per capita, and manufacturing exports are all positively correlated. We can instrument for economic freedom to address reverse causality concerns.
– Foreign aid doesn’t boost growth. (Citation of Rajan & Subramanian)
– Meaningful accountability promotes success.

The report and the full dataset are available online. (Unfortunately, the data are only available at five year intervals prior to 2000, so you can’t go very far back if assembling annual panel data.)