This Issues Paper draws together evidence and initial analysis to propose a foundation and testable lines of inquiry for the Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) evaluation of the relevance and effectiveness of Doing Business (DB) for country reforms. The paper reviews six major sources of evidence on the use and influence of the World Bank Group's DB indicators and reports and their relevance for client country policy reforms. It then marshals the evidence to formulate six lines of inquiry that will augment evaluation questions laid out in the Approach Paper to guide the evaluation.
Seventeen in a series of annual reports comparing business regulation in 190 economies, Doing Business 2020 measures aspects of regulation affecting 10 areas of everyday business activity.
Private firms are at the forefront of the development process, providing more than 90 percent of jobs, supplying goods and services, and representing a significant source of tax revenues. Their ability to grow, create jobs, and reduce poverty depends critically on a well-functioning investment climate--defined as the policy, legal, and institutional arrangements underpinning the functioning of markets and the level of transaction costs and risks associated with starting, operating, and closing a business. The World Bank Group has provided extensive support to investment climate reforms. This evaluation by the Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) assesses the relevance, effectiveness, and social value of World Bank Group support to investment climate reforms as it relates to concerns for inclusion and shared prosperity. IEG finds that the World Bank Group has supported a comprehensive menu of investment climate reforms and has improved investment climate in countries, as measured by number of laws enacted, streamlining of processes and time, or simple cost savings for private firms. However, the impact on investment, jobs, business formation, and growth is not straightforward. Regulatory reforms need to be designed and implemented with both economic and social costs and benefits in mind; IEG found that, in practice, World Bank Group support focuses predominantly on reducing costs to businesses. In supporting investment climate reforms, the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation use two distinct but complementary business models. Despite the fact that investment climate is the most integrated business unit in the World Bank Group, coordination is mostly informal, relying mainly on personal contacts. IEG recommends that the World Bank Group expand its range of diagnostic tools and integrate them in the areas of the business environment not yet covered by existing tools; develop an approach to identify the social effects of regulatory reforms on all groups expected to be affected by them beyond the business community; and exploit synergies by ensuring that World Bank and IFC staff improve their understanding of each other's work and business models.
Fifteen in a series of annual reports comparing business regulation in 190 economies, Doing Business 2018 measures aspects of regulation affecting 10 areas of everyday business activity: • Starting a business • Dealing with construction permits • Getting electricity • Registering property • Getting credit • Protecting minority investors • Paying taxes • Trading across borders • Enforcing contracts • Resolving insolvency These areas are included in the distance to frontier score and ease of doing business ranking. Doing Business also measures features of labor market regulation, which is not included in these two measures. The report updates all indicators as of June 1, 2017, ranks economies on their overall “ease of doing business†?, and analyzes reforms to business regulation †“ identifying which economies are strengthening their business environment the most. Doing Business illustrates how reforms in business regulations are being used to analyze economic outcomes for domestic entrepreneurs and for the wider economy. It is a flagship product produced in partnership by the World Bank Group that garners worldwide attention on regulatory barriers to entrepreneurship. More than 137 economies have used the Doing Business indicators to shape reform agendas and monitor improvements on the ground. In addition, the Doing Business data has generated over 2,182 articles in peer-reviewed academic journals since its inception. Data Notes; Distance to Frontier and Ease of Doing Business Ranking; and Summaries of Doing Business Reforms in 2016/17 can be downloaded separately from the Doing Business website.
IEG began preparing the evaluation in June 2020, in response to a request from the World Bank Group Board's Committee on Development Effectiveness. In March 2021, IEG produced an Issues Paper identifying lines of inquiry for the main evaluation, distributed it for internal and management reviews, and submitted it to CODE in June 2021. In September 2021, as the evaluation was undergoing final revisions, World Bank Group management decided to discontinue the Doing Business report. In announcing its decision, the Bank Group stated that it intended to work on a new approach to assess business and investment climates. In February 2022, the Bank published a pre-concept note introducing the Business Enabling Environment project (BEE), a new benchmarking exercise to "measure the business enabling environment in economies worldwide." In this context and given the use of multiple other global indicators in reforms, the learning from this evaluation report is highly relevant. A cover note extends its findings to the use of other global indicators, including the successor Business Enabling Environment Project. The evaluation seeks to guide any new approach using evidence-based indicators so that it builds on the many good practices observed in Doing Business and considers the substantial power that these indicators have to motivate and engage client countries in business environment reform. It calls for indicators to be used in a balanced and accurate manner guiding the choice of reform priorities in client countries with the greatest development benefits for their socio-economic situation. The following generalized lessons can be drawn from the report: (i) Recognizing the powerful motivational effect of reform indicators, this evaluation notes the limitations in the coverage and guidance offered by any single indicator set on its own and advocates integrating them with complementary analytic tools and indicators. (ii) Recognizing the granularity and specificity of individual reforms in any given country context, the findings suggest that it is better to avoid using business regulatory or similar global indicators as explicit reform objectives or monitoring indicators in Bank Group projects and country strategies focused on improving the business environment. This does not preclude the use of primary data to track and measure agreed targets critical to Bank Group institutional commitments. (iii) Global indicators coverage and specifications are improved if, at regular and predictable intervals, they are updated to reflect learning from research and field experience to (i) improve links to important development outcomes; (ii) strengthen relevance to the experience of the subject of coverage; and (iii) adapt to technological changes in the areas covered by the indicators. (iv) The DB experience indicates the need for mechanisms and safeguards to assure the accuracy and validity of World Bank Group global indicator-based reports and related communications, using robust and transparent standards of evidence.
Sixteenth in a series of annual reports comparing business regulation in 190 economies, Doing Business 2019 measures aspects of regulation affecting areas of everyday business activity.
The seventh in a series of annual reports investigating the regulations that enhance business activity and those that constrain it, 'Doing Business' presents quantitative indicators on business regulations and the protection of property rights that can be compared across 183 economies--from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe--and over time. Regulations affecting 10 stages of a business's life are measured: starting a business, dealing with construction permits, employing workers, registering property, getting credit, protecting investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts and closing a business. Data in 'Doing Business 2010' are current as of June 1, 2009. The indicators are used to analyze economic outcomes and identify what reforms have worked, where and why.
'The Road to Results: Designing and Conducting Effective Development Evaluations' presents concepts and procedures for evaluation in a development context. It provides procedures and examples on how to set up a monitoring and evaluation system, how to conduct participatory evaluations and do social mapping, and how to construct a "rigorous" quasi-experimental design to answer an impact question. The text begins with the context of development evaluation and how it arrived where it is today. It then discusses current issues driving development evaluation, such as the Millennium Development Goals and the move from simple project evaluations to the broader understandings of complex evaluations. The topics of implementing 'Results-based Measurement and Evaluation' and constructing a 'Theory of Change' are emphasized throughout the text. Next, the authors take the reader down 'the road to results, ' presenting procedures for evaluating projects, programs, and policies by using a 'Design Matrix' to help map the process. This road includes: determining the overall approach, formulating questions, selecting designs, developing data collection instruments, choosing a sampling strategy, and planning data analysis for qualitative, quantitative, and mixed method evaluations. The book also includes discussions on conducting complex evaluations, how to manage evaluations, how to present results, and ethical behavior--including principles, standards, and guidelines. The final chapter discusses the future of development evaluation. This comprehensive text is an essential tool for those involved in development evaluation.
