Timothy Besley
Law, regulation, and the business climate: the nature and influence of the World Bank Doing Business project
Article (Published version) (Refereed)
Original citation:
Besley, Timothy (2015) Law, regulation, and the business climate: the nature and influence of the World Bank Doing Business project. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 29 (3). pp. 99-120. ISSN 0895-3309
DOI: 10.1257/jep.29.3.99
copy; 2015 American Economic Association
This version available at: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/66000/ Available in LSE Research Online: April 2016
LSE has developed LSE Research Online so that users may access research output of the School. Copyright copy; and Moral Rights for the papers on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. Users may download and/or print one copy of any article(s) in LSE Research Online to facilitate their private study or for non-commercial research. You may not engage in further distribution of the material or use it for any profit-making activities or any commercial gain. You may freely distribute the URL (http://eprints.lse.ac.uk) of the LSE Research Online website.
Law, Regulation, and the Business Climate: The Nature and Influence of the World Bank Doing Business Projectdagger;
Timothy Besley
he importance of a well-functioning legal and regulatory system in creating an effective market economy is now widely accepted. After all, a poor contracting and regulatory environment can raise the cost of doing busi-
T
ness with knock-on effects to employment, output, investment, productivity, and living standards. But how to measure or even to conceptualize differences in the business climate is far from settled. Should the focus be on a few specific indicators or many? Can whatever indicators are chosen be usefully compared across time and countries? Can such data be updated in a timely way as policy reforms occur?
One flagship project that tries to measure the environment in which businesses operate in countries across the world is the World Bankrsquo;s Doing Business project, which was launched in 2002. At its core, this project gathers quantitative data to compare regulations faced by small and medium-size enterprises across economies and over time. The centerpiece of the project is the annual Doing Business report. It was first published in 2003 with five sets of indicators for 133 economies, and currently includes 11 sets of indicators for 189 economies. The report includes a table that ranks each country in the world according to its scores across the indicators.
The Doing Business project has become a major resource for academics, jour- nalists, and policymakers. The project also enjoys a high public profile with close to ten million hits on its website each year, making it one of the most prominent knowl- edge products produced by the World Bank. When Narendra Modi was elected Prime Minister of India, he explicitly targeted achieving 50th place in the ranking as
- Timothy Besley is School Professor of Economics and Political Science, London School of Economics, London, United Kingdom and W. Arthur Lewis Professor of Development Economics. His email address is t.besley@lse.ac.uk.
dagger; To access the Appendix, Data Appendix, and disclosure statement, visit http://dx.doi.org/10.1257/jep.29.3.99 doi=10.1257/jep.29.3.99
a benchmark for his administration—which would mean an improvement of almost 100 places compared to Indiarsquo;s recent rankings (for example, Buerkle 2015). In 2012 Russian President Vladimir Putin set the goal of improving its Doing Business ranking to twentieth by 2018 (as reported in Adelaja 2012). Many countries are keen to promote their achievements in moving up the rankings in trying to attract investors, which is acknowledged in government export promotion strategies. For example, the UK government mentions Perursquo;s ranking of 43 on “ease of doing business” prominently in its assessment of its business climate (UK Trade amp; Invest- ment 2014). The project has passed from being a data source and research tool to playing a role in the political economy of development policy.
Leading academic economists have been involved in the Doing Business report from the start, both on the design of indicators and in using the results in research, and so in general terms, the report reflects the broad direction of mainstream thinking in development economics. Thus, it is now common to talk about the institutional underpinnings of development and the quality of the state in supporting development (for example, Besley and Persson 2011; Acemoglu and Robinson 2012). The Doing Business report collects data for a terrain over which there had been only scant knowledge previously, and so it is no surprise that academic researchers and policy analysts have taken the data to heart. Since 2003, over 2,000 research articles have been published in peer-reviewed academic jour- nals using this data, with more than 5,000 working papers being posted online.
With such interest, itrsquo;s no surprise that the Doing Business report has come under intense scrutiny. In 2012, following discussions by its board, the World Bank commis- sioned an independent review to evaluate the project (see http:/
首先，对《营商环境》项目的运作方式有一个广泛的了解是很有用的。通过调查律师事务所，在参与的国家投放了大约10000份问卷，在有关11个特定主题的问卷中进行数据收集：
1)“开展业务”是对开展新业务所需的程序、时间、成本和最低资本的衡量。
2)“处理施工许可证”是衡量建造仓库所需的程序、时间和成本的方法。
3)“取电”是企业为新建仓库获得永久电力连接所需的程序、时间和成本的度量。
4)“财产注册”是对商业房地产注册所需的程序、时间和成本的一种度量。
5)“获得信贷”评估了“合法权利”指数的实力，衡量了抵押和破产法保护借贷双方权利的程度；以及“信贷信息”指数的深度，衡量了信贷信息的共享。
6)“保护投资者”衡量披露程度、董事责任以及股东诉讼的难易程度。
7)“缴纳税款”用于衡量已缴税款的数量、每年准备纳税申报单所花费的小时数以及应缴税款总额占毛利润的比例。
8)“跨境贸易”是对进出口货物所需文件数量、成本和时间的度量。
9)“执行合同”是对执行债务合同所需的程序、时间和成本的度量。
10)“解决破产”是破产程序涉及的时间、成本和回收率的一种度量。
11)“雇佣工人”是雇用或解雇工人的难易程度和工作时间的刚性的一种度量。尽管该指数已不再用于总排名中。
在“营商环境”项目之前，我们对商业环境的许多方面知之甚少。例如，大多数国家没有收集有关创办企业所需要的时间和精力的信息，更不用说以在国际上进行比较的方式来获取此类信息。
资料编号：[240084]，资料为PDF文档或Word文档，PDF文档可免费转换为Word
以上是毕业论文外文翻译，课题毕业论文、任务书、文献综述、开题报告、程序设计、图纸设计等资料可联系客服协助查找。
