Freer Indian reservations prosper more

Several disciplines in social sciences have shown that institutions that promote cooperation facilitate mutually beneficial exchanges and generate prosperity. Drawing on these insights, this paper develops a Reservation Economic Freedom Index that classifies institutions on a sample of Indian reservations concerning whether these intuitions will enhance the prosperity of Indians residing on these reservations. The development of this index is guided by the research of political scientists, economists, other social science disciplines, and research in law. When correlating this index with Indian incomes, the evidence shows a statistically significant positive correlation between reservations with prosperity-enhancing institutions and their economic prosperity.

That is from a recent article by my colleague Thomas Stratmann, recently published in Public Choice.  Here is the SSRN version.  Here is the index itself.  Here is a related Op-Ed.