Economy - Entrepreneurship

Ease of Doing Business Index, 2005

Note: All data are from the World Bank Project on benchmarking business regulations. This "Doing Business" database provides objective comparative measures of business regulations and their enforcement for 155 economies all over the world. They indicate the regulatory costs of business and can be used to analyze the challenges of would-be entrepreneurs.

Source: The World Bank Group, 2005 (Data downloaded in September 2005)

The United States of America is a much better place for doing business than Europe or China - at least if you believe this world bank ranking of regulatory costs and constraints. Among the 155 nations compared, the US has rank 3, while the four European economies of Germany, France, United Kingdom and Poland have ranks of 19, 44, 9 and 54 respectively. China has a business rank of 91.

A main reason for the relatively low ranks of Germany and France are very low values for "Hiring and Firing Workers" and "Registering Property" (in the case of France). As often said, these two countries have particularly inflexible labor markets, which make it difficult for entrepreneurs to start businesses.

For details of the methodology used in the collection and calculation of "ease of doing business" statistics see:
(1) The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development / The World Bank (2005): Doing Business in 2006. Creating Jobs. Washington, DC (ISBN 0-8213-5749-2). (2) Djankov, S. / La Porta, R. / de Silanes, F. L. / Shleifer, A. (2001): The Regulation of Entry. The World Bank. (3) The World Bank (2005): Doing Business. Benchmarking business regulations. Web site.