HERE IS MY suggestion to the Heritage Foundation. Scrap that complicated analysis of 50 different economic variables to rank all countries by economic freedom. You have just stumbled across the one that says it all.
It is your newly refined black-market score, and it is the only one you need. By measuring the extent to which black markets operate in any country you get an almost perfect reverse indicator of economic freedom in that country.
Think about it. Economic freedom is really a measure of how much private individuals are free from government intervention in their efforts to generate an income for themselves. The more they are restrained by government the more they resort to subverting government by generating that income on a black market.
You may say, of course, that private interests, pricing cartels for example, also can restrain economic freedom. True, but when have we thought of people who evade a private cartel as operating in a black market? Only the diamond cartel tries to make us believe this. In any case, it is a general rule that cartels only thrive where governments first create a breeding ground for them.
So, if you find a country with extensive black markets, both in range and depth, you are bound to have a country with a government that sticks its fingers into every economic pie. In short, a country that cannot rate high on anyone's index of economic freedom.
All you then need is a good measuring stick for how deep and wide these black markets are. Use it to take your measure, turn the stick upside down and, hey presto, you have a better economic-freedom index than the Heritage Foundation's at a fraction of the cost.