The World Bank Doing Business Index for Canada: An Assessment

Andrew Sharpe ()

No 2021-02, CSLS Research Reports from Centre for the Study of Living Standards

Abstract: Since 2007, Canada's ranking on the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Index (DBI) has fallen from 4th to 23rd in 2020. The DBI is one of two flagship publications of World Bank. It attempts to measure the business environment in ten areas or pillars for 190 countries. Since 2007, Canada’s ranking has fallen in nine of the ten pillars. However, the overall fall in ranking can be largely explained by Canada's deteriorating performance on four of the pillars of the DBI: trading across borders, dealing with construction permits, enforcing contracts and getting electricity. Following a deep dive into Canada’s performance on the pillars of the DBI, a comparison with other international competitiveness and economic environment indexes is made. This section shows that Canada’s performance on the DBI is an outlier, with Canada’s performance on the Global Competitiveness Index, the World Competitiveness Index, the Economic Freedom Index, and the Human Freedom Index all exceeding Canada’s performance on the DBI in 2020. This report also discusses criticisms of the DBI, which is particularly relevant given the temporary suspension of the DBI, announced August, 2020, in response to data irregularities found in the 2018 and 2020 Doing Business Reports.

Keywords: World Bank; Canada; Doing Business; Ease of Doing Business; Global Affairs Canada; Toronto; ranking; international (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D63 I31 I38 J15 J18 J24 J6 K37 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-law
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.csls.ca/reports/csls2021-02.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sls:resrep:1917

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.csls.ca

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CSLS Research Reports from Centre for the Study of Living Standards 170 Laurier Ave. W, Suite 604, Ottawa, ON K1P 5V5. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CSLS ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).