Economies are ranked on their ease of doing business, from 1 to 190. A high ease of doing business ranking means that the regulatory environment is more conducive to the starting and operation of a local firm. The ranking of economies is determined by sorting the aggregate ease of doing business scores. The aggregate ease of doing business score for each economy is the simple average of their scores on each of the 10 topics included in the ranking: 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. All topics are weighted equally.

Questionnaires are administered to more than 14,000 local experts, including lawyers, business consultants, accountants, freight forwarders, government officials and other relevant professional. 

The Doing Business team has several rounds of interaction with many experts, involving conference calls, written correspondence and country visits by the team. For the Doing Business 2020 study, team members visited 36 economies to verify data and recruit respondents. 

The data from questionnaires are subjected to numerous rounds of verification, leading to revisions or expansions of the information collected. The data for all sets of indicators in Doing Business 2020 are as of May 1, 2019 (except for the paying taxes indicators, for which the data refer to calendar year 2018). 

By documenting changes in regulation in 12 areas of business activ­ity in 190 economies, Doing Business analyzes regulation that encourages efficiency and supports freedom to do business. The data collected by Doing Business address three questions about government. First, when do governments change regulation with a view to developping their private sector? Second, what are the characteristics of reformist governments? Third, what are the effects of regulatory change on different aspects of economic or investment activity? Answering these questions adds to our knowledge of development.

With these objectives at hand, Doing Business measures the processes for business incorporation, getting a building permit, obtaining an elec­tricity connection, transferring property, getting access to credit, protecting minority investors, paying taxes, engaging in international trade, enforcing contracts, and resolving insolvency. Doing Business also collects and pub­lishes data on regulation of employment as well as contracting with the government (public procurement). The employing workers indicator set measures regulation in the areas of hiring, working hours, and redundancy. The contracting with the government indicators capture the time and procedures involved in a standardized public procurement for road resurfacing. These two indicator sets do not constitute part of the ease of doing business ranking.

While the employing workers indicator is not included in the calculation of the ease of doing business ranking, the indicator has not been excluded from the Doing Business 2020 study. Currently, the employing workers raw data are presented on the Doing Business website but are not factored into the ease of doing business ranking. Employing workers indicators might be brought into the rankings in the future editions of the study.

The Doing Business methodology is designed to be an easily replicable way to benchmark specific characteristics of business regulation—how they are implemented by governments and experienced by private firms on the ground. Its advantages and limitations should be understood when using the data.

Ensuring comparability of the data across a global set of economies is a central consideration for the Doing Business indicators, which are developed using standardized case scenarios with specific assumptions. One such assumption is the location of a standardized business—the subject of the Doing Business case study—in the largest business city of the economy. The reality is that business regulations and their enforcement may differ within a country, particularly in federal states and large economies. Gathering data for every relevant jurisdiction in each of the 190 economies covered by Doing Business is infeasible. Nevertheless, where policy makers are interested in generating data at the local level, beyond the largest business city, and learning from local good practices, Doing Business has complemented its global indicators with subnational studies. Also, starting with Doing Business 2015, coverage was extended to the second-largest city in economies with a population of more than 100 million (as of 2013).

Doing Business recognizes the limitations of the standardized case scenarios and assumptions. Although such assumptions come at the expense of generality, they also help to ensure the comparability of data. Some Doing Business topics are complex, so it is important that the standardized cases are defined carefully. For example, the standardized case scenario usually involves a limited liability company or its legal equivalent. There are two reasons for this assumption. First, private limited liability companies are the most prevalent business form (for firms with more than one owner) in many economies around the world. Second, this choice reflects the focus of Doing Business on expanding opportunities for entrepreneurship: investors are encouraged to venture into business when potential losses are limited to their capital participation.

Another assumption underlying the Doing Business indicators is that entrepreneurs have knowledge of and comply with applicable regulations. In practice, entrepreneurs may not be aware of what needs to be done or how to comply with regulations and may lose considerable time trying to find out. Alternatively, they may intentionally avoid compliance—by not registering for social security, for example. Firms may opt for bribery and other informal arrangements intended to bypass the rules where regulation is particularly onerous. Levels of informality tend to be higher in economies with particularly burdensome regulation. Compared with their formal sector counterparts, firms in the informal sector typically grow more slowly, have poorer access to credit, and employ fewer workers—and these workers remain outside the protections of labor law and, more generally, other legal protections embedded in the law. Firms in the informal sector are also less likely to pay taxes. Doing Business measures one set of factors that help explain the occurrence of informality, and it provides policy makers with insights into potential areas of regulatory reform.

Many important policy areas are not covered by Doing Business; even within the areas it covers its scope is narrow. Doing Business does not measure the full range of factors, policies, and institutions that affect the quality of an economy’s business environment or its national competitiveness. It does not, for example, capture aspects of macroeconomic stability, development of the financial system, market size, the incidence of bribery and corruption, or the quality of the labor force.

The focus is deliberately narrow even within the relatively small set of indicators included in Doing Business. The time and cost required for the logistical process of exporting and importing goods are captured in the trading across borders indicators, for example, but the indicators do not measure the cost of tariffs or international transport. Similarly, the indicators on starting a business or protecting minority investors do not cover all aspects of commercial legislation. Given that Doing Business measures only a few features of each area that it covers, business regulatory reforms should not focus only on these areas and should be evaluated within a broader perspective.

The Doing Business research is conducted in cooperation with leading academic scholars. Each of the indicators underlying Doing Business is based on an academic paper, and all these papers have been or are in the process of being published in peer-reviewed academic journals. 

Doing Business  provides annual cross-country data on how governments regulate business, enabling research on how regulation affects development. Thousands of empirical studies have assessed how the regulatory environment for business affects productivity, growth, employment, trade, investment, access to finance, and the size of the informal economy.

Since 2003, when this study was first published, articles discussing how regulation in the areas measured by Doing Business influence economic outcomes have been published in peer-reviewed academic journals. Over 10 thousand additional working papers have been posted online. Doing Business 2014 reviewed research articles—including those published in top-ranking economics journals between 2008 and 2013 or disseminated as working papers in 2012–13—that used Doing Business data for analysis or motivation. 

Each topic covered by Doing Business relates to a different aspect of the business regulatory environment. The scores and rankings of each economy can vary considerably across topics, indicating that a strong performance by an economy in one area of regulation can coexist with a weak performance in another. One way to assess the variability of an economy’s regulatory performance is to look at its scores across topics. Qatar, for example, has an overall ease of doing business score of 68.7, meaning that it is about two-thirds of the way from the worst to the best performance. It scores highly at 99.4 on paying taxes, 96.2 on registering property and 86.1 on starting a business. At the same time, it has a score of 28.0 for protecting minority investors, 38.0 for resolving insolvency and 45.0 for getting credit.

Each Doing Business topic measures a different aspect of the business regulatory environment. The scores and associated rankings of an economy can vary, sometimes significantly, across topics. The average correlation coefficient between the 10 topics included in the aggregate ease of doing business score is 0.50, and the coefficients between two topics range from 0.32 (between getting credit and paying taxes) to 0.68 (between dealing with construction permits and getting electricity). These correlations suggest that economies rarely score universally well or universally badly on Doing Business topics.

Variation in performance across topics is not at all unusual. It reflects differences in the degree of priority that government authorities give to particular areas of business regulation reform and in the ability of different government agencies to deliver tangible results in their area of responsibility.

Doing Business uses the World Bank regional and income group classifications, available here. 

Doing Business 2004 presented indicators in five topics: starting a business, employing workers, enforcing contracts, getting credit and resolving insolvency. Doing Business 2005 added another two indicator sets: registering property and protecting minority investors. Doing Business 2006 added three more topics: dealing with construction permits, paying taxes and trading across borders. Getting electricity was added in Doing Business 2012, for a total of 11 areas.

Doing Business also continues including more economies in the sample. Doing Business 2006 included 155 economies and Doing Business 2007 added 20 economies. Doing Business 2008 again added three economies: Brunei Darussalam, Liberia and Luxembourg. Doing Business 2009 added three more economies: The Bahamas, Bahrain and Qatar. Doing Business 2010 added an additional two economies: Cyprus and Kosovo. Doing Business 2013 again added two new economies: Barbados and Malta. In 2014, Doing Business added four new economies: Libya, Myanmar, San Marino and South Sudan, to include 189 economies in the sample. In Doing Business 2015, the second largest business city was added for the 11 economies with a population of more than 100 million. These are: Bangladesh, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Russian Federation and the United States. Finally, in Doing Business 2018, Somalia was added to the sample. Liechtenstein will be added to the sample of the Doing Business 2021 study. In its 17 years of publication, Doing Business has collected more than 500,000 data points each year, the details of which are available on this website.

Questions on the methodology and challenges to data may be submitted to Doing Business via email or via an online system for data update submission. 

For Doing Business 2020, the assumptions of the protecting minority investors indicator set refocused on corporate governance for listed companies. Economies are assessed on the same practices and new metrics were introduced. However, scores reflect two modifications.

First, the indicator measures good practices for listed companies only. Questions on non-listed private limited liability companies are not included in the score. As a result, the maximum score for the extent of shareholder rights index is 6, extent of ownership and control index, 7 and extent of corporate transparency index, 7. The aggregate of these 3 indices, the extent of shareholder governance index, is out of 20 points.

Second, to better measure practice and effective regulations, the indicator considers whether the rules and regulations measured apply to at least ten listed companies. If an economy does not have an active stock exchange with at least 10 equity listings that are not state-owned, the indicator does not consider rules and regulations that apply to other company types and for which these practices may not be warranted. State-owned enterprises (SOEs) are defined by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) as enterprises where the state has significant control through full, majority, or significant minority ownership. SOEs which are owned by the central or federal government are included, in addition to SOEs owned by regional and local government.

To score on the extent of shareholder governance index, there must be at least ten companies offering their equity shares on a public exchange. State-owned enterprises and companies that only issue non-equity securities without ownership and voting rights (e.g. bonds, preferred shares without voting rights) are not counted.

What are the indicator assumptions about the business?

For the extent of conflict of interest regulation index (0-30), the business (Buyer):

• Is a publicly traded corporation that has equity securities listed on the economy’s most important stock exchange. It is not state-owned. It is incorporated as a company form admitted to list equity shares on the stock exchange and has an unlimited number of shareholders. Examples include the Joint Stock Company (JSC), the Public Limited Company (PLC), the C Corporation, the Societas Europaea (SE), the Aktiengesellschaft (AG), and the Société Anonyme/Sociedad Anónima (SA).

• If an economy does not have an active stock exchange with at least 10 equity listings that are not state-owned, it is assumed that Buyer is a large private joint-stock company with multiple shareholders.

For the shareholder governance index (0-20), the business (Buyer):

• Is a publicly traded corporation that has equity securities listed on the economy’s most important stock exchange. It is not state-owned. It is incorporated as a company form admitted to list equity shares on the stock exchange and has an unlimited number of shareholders. Examples include the Joint Stock Company (JSC), the Public Limited Company (PLC), the C Corporation, the Societas Europaea (SE), the Aktiengesellschaft (AG), and the Société Anonyme/Sociedad Anónima (SA).

• If an economy does not have an active stock exchange with at least 10 equity listings that are not state-owned, the economy does not receive a score on the shareholder governance index.

Under the indicator assumptions, equity shares are defined as ordinary shares or common stock. The holders of ordinary shares have the right to vote on managerial decisions (e.g. appoint board members), receive dividends, and claims over the residual assets of the company in the event of liquidation.

In parallel with the Doing Business 2018 study, the team conducted a pilot of the contracting with the government indicator for 18 countries. Through this pilot, and through extensive engagements with external experts, the team refined its questionnaire and conducted a much larger data collection exercise in parallel with the Doing Business 2019 study. Data were finalized for over 90 economies. By the publication of the Doing Business 2020 study, data have been finalized for all 190 economies benchmarked by the larger Doing Business dataset.

No. The Doing Business 2020 study includes a chapter summarizing the areas covered by the indicator and some examples and analytics on how this unique dataset identifies good practices in public procurement or, on the other hand, signals inefficiencies. The indicator will be considered for inclusion in the Doing Business ranking in the following study.

The data are collected from 2 major sources:

1. Lawyers with experience in administrative and procurement law – these experts are pivotal in directing the team to the right laws and regulations, in providing a clear understanding of administrative powers, as well as in providing insights on their practical interactions with the procuring entity and the contractors.
   
   
2. Construction/engineering firms – these experts are key to helping the team understand how regulations are applied in practice, especially in some phases of the project in which lawyers might be less involved (such as quality controls and payments).

The above contributions are complemented, where relevant and appropriate, by insights provided directly by the procuring entity, for example on budgeting or internal needs assessment procedures. World Bank Group colleagues also provide useful insights on the practices and regulations of economies within their portfolios.

The Doing Business project is grateful for the generous contribution of more than 14,000 lawyers, accountants, freight forwarders, architects and public officials who serve as contributors in 190 economies. Learn more.

The Doing Business study is not printed for dissemination purposes anymore and is only available in PDF format on the website http://www.doingbusiness.org. The research and data arm of the World Bank Group, Development Economics Vice Presidency (DEC), has recently stopped printing all reports to reduce its environmental footprint. 

The analysis in Doing Business studies has direct relevance for policy reform. It reveals the relationship between business regulation indicators and economic and social outcomes, allowing policymakers to see how particular laws and regulations are associated with poverty, corruption, employment, access to credit, the size of the informal economy and the entry of new firms. The data offer a wealth of detail on regulation across the measured areas that either enhances or hinders business activity, the most significant bottlenecks causing bureaucratic delay and the cost of complying with regulation. After reviewing their economy’s performance on the Doing Business indicators, governments can identify where they perform poorly and hence what to reform.

What works in developed economies often also works well in developing economies, defying the often-used claim that "one size does not fit all." But reform options are not always the same across high-income, upper-middle-income, lower-middle-income and low-income economies. In such instances, developing economies could simplify the models used in developed economies to make them workable with less capacity and fewer resources. Moreover, the good practice examples presented in the Doing Business study are not limited to high-income economies or economies where comprehensive regulatory reform has taken place. The study provides many examples of successful reforms in developing economies in various areas of business regulation.

Economies that score highest on the ease of doing business share several common features, including the widespread use of electronic systems. All of the 20 top-ranking economies have online business incorporation processes, electronic tax filing platforms and allow online procedures related to property transfers. Moreover, 11 economies have electronic procedures for construction permitting. In general, the 20 top performers have sound business regulation with a high degree of transparency. The average scores of these economies are 12.2 (out of 15) on the building quality control index, 7.2 (out of 8) on the reliability of supply and transparency of tariffs index, 24.8 (out of 30) on the quality of land administration and 13.2 (out of 18) on the quality of judicial processes. Fourteen of the 20 top performers have a unified collateral registry, and 14 allow a viable business to continue operating as a going concern during insolvency proceedings.

Policymakers, the international aid community, investors and researchers use Doing Business data and analysis to compare economies on their regulatory environment for local business, assess the impact of laws and regulations on business activity, make informed decisions regarding policy reform and private investment, identify good practices in regulatory reform and support research on institutions and regulation.