Unsupervised Learning - K-Means Clustering and Hierarchical Clustering - The Heritage Foundation's Economic Freedom Index Analysis 2019 - By David Salako.

Background and Context

Created in 1995 by the Heritage Foundation, The Index of Economic Freedom is a ranking created to measure the economic freedom in the countries of the world.

Now, in its 25th edition, The Economic Freedom Index is poised to help readers track over two decades of the advancement in economic freedom, prosperity, and opportunity and promote these ideas in their homes, schools, and communities.

The Index covers 12 freedoms, from property rights to financial freedom, in 186 countries.

Objective:

As a data scientist, I have been tasked to (1) analyze the data, (2) use clustering algorithms to identify different groups of countries based on economic freedom, and (3) list the insights from the analysis.

Data Dictionary & Description:

The data comprises factors indicating economic freedom. The list of variables in the data is given below. All these features are self-explanatory and more details can be found in the data source listed below.

• CountryID
• Country Name
• WEBNAME
• Region
• World Rank
• Region Rank
• 2019 Score
• Property Rights
• Judical Effectiveness
• Government Integrity
• Tax Burden
• Gov't Spending
• Fiscal Health
• Business Freedom
• Labor Freedom
• Monetary Freedom
• Trade Freedom
• Investment Freedom
• Financial Freedom
• Tariff Rate (%)
• Income Tax Rate (%)
• Corporate Tax Rate (%)
• Tax Burden % of GDP
• Gov't Expenditure % of GDP
• Country
• Population (Millions)
• GDP (Billions, PPP)
• GDP Growth Rate (%)
• 5 Year GDP Growth Rate (%)
• GDP per Capita (PPP)
• Unemployment (%)
• Inflation (%)
• FDI Inflow (Millions)
• Public Debt (% of GDP)

Data Source:

This dataset belongs to The Heritage Foundation and is freely available to download on their website (https://www.heritage.org/index/ranking).

The Index of Economic Freedom considers every component equally important in achieving the positive benefits of economic freedom.

Each freedom is weighted equally in determining country scores.

Countries considering economic reforms may find significant opportunities for improving economic performance in those factors in which they score the lowest.

These factors may indicate significant binding constraints on economic growth and prosperity.