DOL co-blogger Robert A. Lawson and I have a paper in the new issue of Business & Politics entitled "Human Rights and Economic Liberalization." The paper is available here. Here's the abstract:

Using several case studies and data from the Economic Freedom of the World annual report and from the CIRI Human Rights Data Project, we estimate the effect of human rights abuses on economic liberalization. The data suggest that human rights abuses reduce rather than accelerate the pace of economic liberalization.