The Doing Business Report (DBR)

• Author: Lloyd G. Waller/Densil A. Williams/Omar E. Hawthorne/Donavon Johnson
• Profession: Head of the Department of Government at The University of the West Indies, Mona. His research focuses on research methodologies; governance and public policy; and digital transformation/Professor of International Business at the UWI/Lecturer of International Relations and a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Leadership and Governance at ...
• Pages: 25-37

What is the Doing Business Report?

2002, ‘looks at domestic small and medium-size companies and measures the

regulations applying to them through their life cycle’ (World Bank 2017, 1).

their enforcement across 190 economies and selected cities at the subnational

Doing Business/About Doing Business, World Bank, 1).

The World Bank further stated:

Doing Business measures aspects of business regulation affecting

domestic small and medium-size rms, dened based on standardized

case scenarios and located in the largest business city of each economy,

covering 11 areas of business regulation across 190 economies and relying

on four main sources of information: relevant laws and regulations, Doing

Business respondents, governments of the economies covered, and World

Bank Group regional staff. Ten of these areas (1) starting a business, (2)

dealing with construction permits, (3) getting electricity, (4) registering

property, (5) getting credit, (6) protecting minority investors, (7) paying

taxes, (8) trading across borders, (9) enforcing contracts, and (10) resolving

insolvency - are included in the computation of frontier score and ease of

doing business ranking, while features of labor market regulation remains

separate (World Bank 2017, 1).

The Doing Business report essentially provides data on the ease of doing

business, ranks each location, and recommends reforms to improve

performance in each of the indicator areas. The Doing Business report was

rst published in 2003 when only ve indicator sets were covered and only 133

economies were included in the report. It is now extended to 190 countries.

The report focused on laws and regulation and used data that are based on

World Bank (2012), the DBR relied on legal practitioners for large amounts of

data since a ‘corporate lawyer registering 100–150 businesses a year will be

3. The Doing Business Report

(DBR)