About Doing Business

The Doing Business project provides objective measures of business regulations and their  enforcement across 190 economies and selected cities at the  subnational and regional  level.

The Doing Business project, launched in 2002,  looks at domestic small and medium-size companies and measures the  regulations applying  to them  through their  life cycle.

Doing Business captures several important dimensions of the regulatory environment as it applies  to local firms. It provides quantitative indicators on regulation for 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. Doing Business also measures features of employing workers. Although Doing Business does  not present rankings of economies on the  employing workers  indicators or include  the  topic in the aggregate ease of doing business score  or ranking on the  ease of doing business, it does present the data  for these indicators.

By gathering and analyzing comprehensive quantitative data to compare business regulation environments across economies and over time,  Doing Business encourages economies to compete towards more  efficient  regulation; offers measurable benchmarks for reform;  and serves as a resource for academics, journalists, private sector researchers and others interested in the  business climate of each  economy.

In addition, Doing Business offers detailed subnational studies, which exhaustively cover  business regulation and reform  in different cities and regions  within a nation. These  studies provide  data on the  ease of doing business, rank each location, and recommend reforms to improve  performance in each of the  indicator areas. Selected cities can compare their  business regulations with other  cities in the  economy or region  and with the  190 economies that  Doing Business has  ranked.

The first Doing Business study, published in 2003,  covered 5 indicator sets and 133 economies. This year’s  study  covers 11 indicator sets and 190 economies. Most indicator sets  refer  to a case  scenario in the  largest business city of each economy, except for 11 economies that  have  a population of more  than  100 million as of 2013 (Bangladesh, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Japan,  Mexico, Nigeria,  Pakistan, the  Russian Federation and  the  United  States) where Doing Business also collected data for the  second largest business city. The data for these 11 economies are  a population-weighted average for the  2 largest business cities. The project has  benefited from feedback from governments, academics, practitioners and reviewers. The initial goal remains: to provide  an objective basis for understanding and improving  the regulatory environment for business around the  world.

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To learn  more  about Doing Business please visit doingbusiness.org