THIS
POST WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED MARCH 24, 2010
Doing Business Worldwide - World Bank Project
When
entrepreneurs are trying to expand their business vision and find new
applications for their business acumen, they usually start thinking of
going to other countries of the world besides those their business is in
at the time being. Thus, they require a lot of information about how to
start a business in new jurisdiction, and usually seek for some good
resources. Here I would like to point to a very functional one – a
project of World Bank - the Doing Business project.
It was launched 8 years ago and looks at small and medium-size
companies and measures the regulations applying to them through their
life cycle for many countries of the world. The first Doing Business
report, published in 2003, covered 5 indicator sets in 133 economies. In
2010 it covers 10 indicator sets in 183 economies. The project has
benefited from feedback from governments, academics, practitioners and
reviewers. The initial goal remains: to provide an objective basis for
understanding and improving the regulatory environment for business.
Doing Business provides a quantitative measure of regulations for
starting a business, dealing with construction permits, employing
workers, registering property, getting credit, protecting
investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts and
closing a business—as they apply to domestic small and medium-size
enterprises. It encompasses 2 types of data. The first come from
readings of laws and regulations. The second are time and motion
indicators that measure the efficiency in achieving a regulatory goal
(such as granting the legal identity of a business).
Seven years of Doing Business data have enabled a growing body of
research on how performance on Doing Business indicators—and reforms
relevant to those indicators—relate to desired social and economic
outcomes. Some 405 articles have been published in peer-reviewed
academic journals, and about 1,143 working papers are available through Google Scholar.
So, I strongly recommend to look into it and thoroughly analyze the data before going to any country.
