The Dominican Republic was ranked as a “mostly non-free” nation in a survey of the index of economic freedom for 101 countries. The study, prepared by Bryan T. Johnson and Thomas P. Sheehey of the U.S.-based Heritage Foundation, assesses the implementation of free market policies in all countries and grades them in order, from “most economically free” to “least economically free”.
The two political economists use a scale of 1 (free) to 5 (repressed) and base their research on 10 factors including trade, taxation, monetary, and banking policies, government spending as a percentage of total GDP, influx of capital and foreign investments, salary and price controls, intellectual property rights, regulatory environment, and black market participation. The country scored on the higher end of the scale in most of these areas for an average of 3.4 points.