The letter "Economic ranking seems out of line" (Nov. 27 Reader Views) was riddled with inaccuracies. Our U.S. Economic Freedom Index was never designed to "measure the business climate," as the writer claimed. It measures the policy environment of each state as it relates to free enterprise and consumer choice -- period. Many other factors besides government rules and regulations, what we call economic freedom, affect a state's business climate. We did not look at these factors, because they were beyond the scope of our study. Perhaps this explains why our results diverge from other indexes.

In his largest misstatement about our study, the writer said our study "ignores the out-migration that has already cost Kansas one congressional seat." Actually, our study is the only one of its kind to develop a statistical model of domestic migration examining many factors influencing where people move. Our results show, at the margin, people are moving from less-free states to freer states, everything else considered.

Kansas might be losing people, but it is likely for reasons other than economic freedom.

The writer suggested that our index is flawed because it doesn't return the same answers as others. This route of thinking would have had Columbus fall off the edge of the Earth.