How Liechtenstein Achieved the Highest Per Capita GDP

How Liechtenstein Achieved the Highest Per Capita GDP
The Hoover Institution - Hoover Institution
Since 1989, H.S.H. Prince Hans-Adam II has reigned in Liechtenstein. Comprising 62 square miles nestled between Austria and Switzerland with a population of about 35,000, Liechtenstein is one of the world's smallest nations -- but has the highest per capita GDP in the world. The head of a family that traces its history back more than 900 years, to the beginning of the second millennium, Prince Hans-Adam is the author of a new book, The State in the Third Millennium.From his perspective as a ruling monarch, Prince Hans-Adam affirms the centrality of democracy in the modern nation-state and makes the case for limited government: "[The United States and Europe] have to free the state from all the unnecessary tasks and burdens with which it has been loaded during the last hundred years, which have distracted it from its two main tasks: maintenance of the rule of law and foreign policy."Using the examples of China and Russia to illustrate the difficulty of transitioning from dictatorships to democracy, he asserts the primacy of establishing economic freedom. Finally, he speaks to the importance of America maintaining its preeminent role in world affairs.