For three years the Fraser Institute has conducted a project examining the relationship between economic development and civil, political, and economic freedoms. The purpose of the project is ultimately to construct a global index of economic freedom and thereby to facilitate such an examination. Such an index could also be used in analysis to predict the economic consequence of changes in the level of economic freedom in different countries.

The services economy is pregnant with paradox. It employs our most-skilled and our least-skilled workers. The small productivity increase of service sector workers is regarded as one of the key problems facing us in a future in which four-fifths of the work-force will be employed in the service sector. At the same time, productivity-enhancing outputs from the service sector are the key to future world growth and development. While we can't get rich taking in each other's laundry, the failure to do so as the world economy becomes more 'roundabout' would doom us to stagnation.

This book provides a broad analysis of Canada's real estate brokerage industry, and hence facilitates a better understanding of the circumstances leading up to the regulation deal; for example, the continuing domination of urban resale housing markets by local real estate boards and the merger and franchising waves of the 1980s. It also examines and seeks to explain the persistence of real estate commissions at traditional formula levels, and the correspondingly substantial outlay involved in the resale of a home - an outlay equivalent to the purchase price of a new car whenever we move. More importantly, it suggests a number of further policy initiatives aimed at making the most of the regulation deal, for both government and homeowners, particularly in promoting  more fully competitive real estate brokerage and more efficient resale housing markets.