Warning! Your browser is extremely outdated and not web standards compliant.
Your browsing experience would greatly improve by upgrading to a modern browser.

2025 Common Sense Institue Free Enterprise Report

The Free Enterprise Report is a marquis report that provides an objective, non-partisan, fact-based analysis of the Arizona economic landscape and the state’s most pressing issues. The study is a year long undertaking and includes the CSI Economic Performance Index as well as a Free Enterprise Competitiveness Index across eight different policy areas.

Both indices provide an opportunity to look backwards and better understand where Arizona has been and what direction we are moving. We can better understand how we are performing relative to other states and we can equip policy makers, civic and business leaders with the best understanding of how our state is performing, where we are winning, where we are losing and how free enterprise principles can get us back on track.

 

Download the Full Report

Taxes & Fees
Flat Tax & State Budget Facts and Fictions

This analysis of the Arizona flat tax finds that Arizona’s budget has continued to grow since adopting a 2.5 percent flat tax, and that state spending increases—not tax reform—were the primary driver of Ari

June 12, 2025 Glenn FarleyThomas Young
Education
ESA’s in Arizona Q2 2025 Report

CSI expects the ESA program to grow to 91,500 students next year and enroll between 86,500 and 89,500 this Fiscal Year (as of May 2025).

June 05, 2025 Glenn Farley
Housing & Our Community
Building Faster; Building Smarter. Data-Driven Lessons from Arizona’s Permit Freedom Act

Obtaining permission to build a home is a long and onerous process. Planning starts long before the first permit application, and the consequences of early-stage decisions are reflected in those permit appl