The emerging market universe includes a very diverse set of countries, many of which are sorely lacking in the types of freedom enjoyed by their people. Some of the biggest countries in emerging market indexes like China are also some of the worst offenders in this regard. It has been commonly accepted by many that investing in these types of companies is unavoidable for investors who want emerging market exposure and so most investors just ignore the behaviors of the regimes that run the countries within the space.  
But what if you could invest in only the countries that are the most free within the space, and potentially boost your returns at the same time? We discuss this idea with Perth Tolle, the founder of Life + Liberty Indexes. Perth has developed a scoring system that ranks all emerging market countries based on their levels of freedom and has constructed an index that includes the highest scorers. 
We discuss the story of how she came to create this index, the criteria that go into it and its potential to improve the world of emerging market investing.  
We hope you enjoy the discussion.  
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Excess Returns is an investing podcast hosted by Jack Forehand (@practicalquant) and Justin Carbonneau (@jjcarbonneau), partners at Validea. Justin and Jack discuss a wide range of investing topics including factor investing, value investing, momentum investing, multi-factor investing, trend following, market valuation and more with the goal of helping those who watch and listen become better long term investors.
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