Doing Business in 2004: understanding Regulations

Doing Business in 2004: understanding Regulations

Place: 
Washington D.C
Publisher: 
The world bank
Phys descriptions: 
xxi, 194p,tables, charts
Date published: 
2004
Record type: 
Corporate Author: 
World Bank
Subject: 
ISBN: 
0821353411
Call No: 
65.011.1"2004"WOR
Abstract: 

A vibrant private sector-with firms making investments, creating jobs, and improving productivity promotes growth and expands opportunities for poor people . To create one, governments around the world have implemented wide-ranging reforms, including macro-stabilization programs, price liberalization, privatizations, and trade-barrier reductions. In many countries, however, entrepreneurial activity remains limited, poverty high, and growth stagnant. And other countries have spurned orthodox macro reforms and done well. How so? Although macro policies are unquestionably important, there is growing consensus that the quality of business regulation and the institutions that enforce it are a major determinant of prosperity. Hong Kong (China)'s economic success, Botswana's stellar growth performance, and Hungary's smooth transition experience have all been stimulated by a good regulatory environment . But little research has measured specific aspects of regulation and analyzed their impact on economic outcomes such as productivity, investment, informality, corruption, unemployment, and poverty. The lack of systematic knowledge prevents policy-makers from assessing how good legal and regulatory systems are and determining what to reform. Doing Business in 2004: Understanding Regulation is the first in a series of annual reports investigating the scope and manner of regulations that enhance business activity and those that constrain it. The present volume compares more than 130 countries from Albania to Zimbabwe on the basis of new quantitative indicators of business regulations. The indicators are used to analyze economic outcomes and identify what reforms have worked , where, and why. Many sources of data help explain the business environment. More than a dozen organizations such as Freedom House, the Heritage Foundation, and the World Economic Forum - produce and periodically update indicators on country risk, economic freedom, and international competitiveness. As gauges of general economic and policy conditions, these indicators help identify broad priorities for reform. But few indicators focus on the poorest countries, and most of them are designed to inform foreign investors. Yet it is local firms, which are responsible for most economic activity in developing countries, that could benefit the most from reforms. Moreover, many existing indicators rely on perceptions, notoriously difficult to compare across countries or translate into policy recommendations. According to one survey, Belarus and Uzbekistan rank ahead of France, Germany, and Sweden in firms' satisfaction with the efficiency of government. Most important, no indicators assess specific laws and regulations that enforce them. So these indicators provide insufficient detail to guide reform of the scope and efficiency of government regulation. The indicators in the present volume represent a new approach to measurement. The focus is on domestic, primarily smaller, companies. The analysis is based on assessments of laws and regulations, with input from and verification by local experts who deal with practical situations of the type covered in the report.

Language: 

CITATION: World Bank. Doing Business in 2004: understanding Regulations . Washington D.C : The world bank , 2004. - Available at: https://library.au.int/doing-business-2004-understanding-regulations-3