The Effects of Business Environments on Development: Surveying New Firm-level Evidence

Lixin Xu

The World Bank Research Observer, 2011, vol. 26, issue 2, 310-340

Abstract: In the past decade, the World Bank has promoted improving business environments as a key strategy for development, which has led to a significant effort in collecting surveys of the investment climate at the firm level across countries. The author examines the lessons that have emerged from the papers using these new data. The key finding is that the effects of business environments are heterogeneous and depend crucially on industry, initial conditions, and complementary institutions. Some elements of the business environment, such as labor flexibility, low entry and exit barriers, and a reasonable protection from the "grabbing hands" of the government, seem to matter a great deal for most economies. Other elements, such as infrastructure and contracting institutions (that is, courts and access to finance), hinge on their initial status and the size of the market. Copyright 2011, Oxford University Press.

Date: 2011
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (35)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/wbro/lkq012 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:oup:wbrobs:v:26:y:2011:i:2:p:310-340

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

The World Bank Research Observer is currently edited by Peter Lanjouw

More articles in The World Bank Research Observer from World Bank Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().