Does economic freedom push people into suicide?Rutar, Minea (Avtor) Rutar, Tibor (Avtor) economic freedomliberalizationsuicidepanel regressionsneoliberalismThis research paper investigates the impact of market liberalization on country-level suicide rates using asample of 96 developing and developed countries from1980 to 2019. We estimate fixed-effects panel regres-sion models with robust standard errors clustered atthe country level and conduct a variety of robustnesschecks, including using different estimators and disag-gregating the data. We consistently find that the aggregate Economic Freedom of the World (EFW) measure is not statistically significantly related to within-country variations in age-standardized suicide rates, but someindividual components are. Freedom to trade internationally weakly predicts increases in suicide rates, while sound money is associated with decreased suiciderates. The former result is highly vulnerable to different specifications. This study underscores the existence of acomplex, non-intuitive relationship between market liberalization and suicide rates, suggesting that both critics and defenders of liberalization might be mistaken in making any unequivocal judgments about the process.20252025-08-07 03:09:06Znanstveno delo94184UDK: 316.334COBISS_ID: 208046851DOI: 10.1111/ajes.12602ISSN pri članku: 0002-9246sl