Law, Regulation, and the Business Climate: The Nature and Influence of the World Bank Doing Business Project
Law, Regulation, and the Business Climate: The Nature and Influence of the World Bank Doing Business Project
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DOI：
10.1257/jep.29.3.99
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发表时间：
2015-06-01
影响因子：
8.4
通讯作者：
Besley, Timothy
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Besley, Timothy
一个运作良好的法律的和管理制度在建立有效的市场经济方面的重要性现已得到广泛承认。2002年启动的世界银行“营商环境”项目是一个试图衡量世界各国企业经营环境的旗舰项目。该项目收集定量数据，以比较不同经济体和不同时期中小型企业面临的监管。该项目的核心是年度《营商环境报告》。它于2003年首次发布，包括133个经济体的五套指标，目前包括189个经济体的11套指标。该报告包括一个表格，根据其在各项指标中的得分对世界上每个国家进行排名。《营商环境报告》项目已成为学者、记者和政策制定者的主要资源。该项目还享有很高的公众形象，其网站每年的点击量接近1000万次。有了这样的兴趣，《营商环境报告》受到严格审查也就不足为奇了。2012年，在董事会讨论之后，世界银行委托一个独立审查小组对该项目进行评估，我是其中的一员。在本文中，我首先描述了《营商环境报告》项目的运作方式，并以2015年报告的一些关键发现为例进行说明。接下来，我将讨论该项目的价值，对它的批评，以及报告中阐述的一些更广泛的政治经济问题。
The importance of a well-functioning legal and regulatory system in creating an effective market economy is now widely accepted. One flagship project that tries to measure the environment in which businesses operate in countries across the world is the World Bank's Doing Business project, which was launched in 2002. 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, journalists, and policymakers. The project also enjoys a high public profile with close to ten million hits on its website each year. With such interest, it's no surprise that the Doing Business report has come under intense scrutiny. In 2012, following discussions by its board, the World Bank commissioned an independent review panel to evaluate the project, on which I served as a member. In this paper, I first describe how the Doing Business project works and illustrate with some of the key findings of the 2015 report. Next, I address what is valuable about the project, the criticisms of it, and some wider political economy issues illustrated by the report.