The ease of doing business rank: an assessment of its macroeconomic relevance

Abstract

This paper examines the macroeconomic impact of World Bank s Ease of Doing Business (EDB) rank, of increasing importance to policy makers, using simple but robust cross-country regressions. Its main findings are first that GDP per capita is negatively correlated with the EDB rank. Second, that average growth over a ten year period is negatively related to starting per capita income. It points to broad evidence linking these correlations to labour supply factors. Overall, it shows the EDB rank to have limited macroeconomic usefulness and relevance.