… is from page 73 of Robert Lawson’s excellent paper “Economic Freedom in the United States and Other Countries,” which is chapter 3 of the volume What America’s Decline In Economic Freedom Means for Entrepreneurship and Prosperity (Donald J. Boudreaux, ed., 2015):
In our modern world of high technology and low costs for communication and transportation, freedom of exchange across national boundaries is a key ingredient of economic freedom. Many goods and services are now either produced abroad or contain resources supplied from abroad. Voluntary exchange is a positive-sum activity: both trading partners gain and the pursuit of the gain provides the motivation for the exchange. Thus, freedom to trade internationally also contributes substantially to our modern living standards.
DBx: All chapters of the 2015 volume in which Bob Lawson’s paper appears are available free of charge here.


In our modern world of high technology and low costs for communication and transportation, freedom of exchange across national boundaries is a key ingredient of economic freedom. Many goods and services are now either produced abroad or contain resources supplied from abroad. Voluntary exchange is a positive-sum activity: both trading partners gain and the pursuit of the gain provides the motivation for the exchange. Thus, freedom to trade internationally also contributes substantially to our modern living standards.
