World Bank Doing Business 2019

The World Bank Group has released the Doing Business 2019: Training for Reform, a World Bank Group flagship publication, 16th in a series of annual reports measuring the regulations that enhance business activity and those that constrain it. ODI Partners Matjaž Jan and Branko Ilić and ODI Senior Associate Maša Drkušić were invited to contribute to the development of the report’s indicators as legal experts.

Doing Business presents quantitative indicators on business regulations and the protection of property rights that can be compared across 190 economies—from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe—and over time.

Doing Business measures regulations affecting 11 areas of the life of a business. Ten of these areas are included in this year’s ranking on the ease of doing business: starting a business, dealing with construction permits, getting electricity, registering property, getting credit, protecting minority investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts and resolving insolvency. Doing Business also measures labor market regulation, which is not included in this year’s ranking.

Data in Doing Business 2019 are current as of May 1, 2018. The indicators are used to analyze economic outcomes and identify what reforms of business regulation have worked, where and why.