Only 10 other countries around the world provide businesses and individuals with a degree of economic freedom similar to America's, according to the annual survey of global economic freedom published by the Heritage Foundation, Washington.
The economies of 142 countries were rated, up from 101 countries last year.
The countries receiving the best ratings were Hong Kong, Singapore, Bahrain, New Zealand, Switzerland and the Netherlands. Cuba, Iraq, Laos and North Korea received the worst scores.
Sixty-five countries were rated as "free" or "mostly free" while 77 earned ratings of "mostly unfree" or "repressed."
Each country was rated on 10 economic factors: banking, foreign investment, monetary, tax, trade, wage and price policies, size of the government sector, property rights, regulatory restrictions, and black market activity.
