The doing business ranking and the design of public policies: the effect of regional dynamics

Figures & data

Figure 1. Conceptual framework (adapted from Estevão et al. (2020)).

Table 1. Variables description.

	Name	Acronym in the paper	Description	Details
Dependent variable	GDP per capita	GDP	Gross domestic profit per country disclosed by World Bank.	In US dollars (retrieved from World Bank database)
Independent variables	Dealing with Construction Permits	dealperm	is a measure of the procedures, time, and cost required to build a warehouse;	These variables range from a scale of 0 to 100, in which 0 refers to the lowest value and the 100 to the highest. A high value represents good performance in the ranking. An average for the 4 years (2015–2018) was applied for each variables in this research (Contractor et al., 2020).
	Getting Credit	getcredit	assesses the strength of the Legal Rights index, which measures the degree to which collateral and bankruptcy laws protect the rights of borrowers and lenders, and the depth of the Credit Information index, which measures the sharing of credit information;
	Protecting Investors	protmininv	measures the extent of disclosure and director liability, and the ease of shareholder lawsuits;
	Paying Taxes	paytax	measures the number of taxes paid, hours per year spent preparing tax returns and the total tax payable as a share of gross profit;
	Trading Across Borders	tradborders	is a measure of the number of documents, cost, and time required to export and import goods;
	Resolving Insolvency	resinsolv	is a measure of the time, cost, and percentage recovery rate involved with bankruptcy proceedings;

Table 2. Descriptive (summary) statistics and calibration.

Variable	Mean	Std. Dev.	Minimum	Maximum	N	Cases Missing	Calibration
Africa
GDPpc 2015/2018	5776.489	6188.111	740.61	26004	49	0	(20000;3300;900)
dealperm	57.69613	14.41459	0	82.213	49	0	(80;60;30)
getcredit	39.41327	19.51762	0	91.25	49	0	(80;37;10)
protmininv	40.04139	16.18386	10	80	49	0	(70;41;20)
paytax	58.61974	17.61307	17.92	94.444	49	0	(90;60;20)
tradborders	54.71044	20.1986	1.8044	91.667	49	0	(85;61;17)
resinsolv	32.82415	17.71885	0	69.065	49	0	(54;38;20)
Latin America
GDPpc 2015/2018	14415.27	7952.185	1654.6	35351	31	0	(28000;14000;5000)
dealperm	63.56666	8.336987	44.218	76.233	31	0	(74;67;50)
getcredit	50.80645	25.73036	10	92.5	31	0	(90;47;20)
protmininv	47.5	14.82533	18	80	31	0	(65;55;25)
paytax	60.99408	12.77397	21.628	79.898	31	0	(78:65;35)
tradborders	70.74408	9.209168	53.074	89.009	31	0	(85;72;58)
resinsolv	39.22027	20.88622	0	84.3	31	0	(70;42;10)
OECD
GDPpc 2015/2018	40539.89	14200.2	22440	93626	34	0	(60000;38000;25000)
dealperm	75.3637	7.25321	56.163	86.759	34	0	(85;76;60)
getcredit	63.16176	16.8286	15	100	34	0	(92;66;42)
protmininv	67.69412	8.94473	50	86	34	0	(83;67;53)
paytax	83.63318	5.813544	64.398	94.622	34	0	(91;84.5;75)
tradborders	94.34013	7.119793	70.561	100	34	0	(100;98;81)
resinsolv	75.05372	12.40975	45.431	93.334	34	0	(90;80;55)

Table 3. Results of the necessary conditions.

	Outcome variable: GDP per capita in Africa		Outcome variable: GDP per capita in Latin America		Outcome variable: GDP per capita in OECD countries
	Consistency	Coverage	Consistency	Coverage	Consistency	Coverage
fsdealperm	0.774882	0.651732	0.598829	0.564504	0.749289	0.674147
∼fsdealperm	0.619403	0.541545	0.706112	0.599136	0.546437	0.553151
fsgetcredit	0.704096	0.625019	0.625637	0.575449	0.563390	0.607663
∼fsgetcredit	0.651633	0.540232	0.620083	0.538201	0.708112	0.604097
fsprotmininv	0.591501	0.579056	0.650087	0.652114	0.711042	0.667425
∼fsprotmininv	0.715161	0.545409	0.585438	0.471191	0.609731	0.589697
fspaytax	0.734537	0.626753	0.617257	0.564845	0.738786	0.696324
∼fspaytax	0.621461	0.535393	0.698191	0.608941	0.529936	0.510367
fstradborders	0.678644	0.608905	0.542300	0.521741	0.587762	0.502187
∼fstradborders	0.677713	0.556324	0.725084	0.604260	0.598100	0.643866
fsresinsolv	0.609373	0.564168	0.724724	0.689419	0.756902	0.766863
∼fsresinsolv	0.681481	0.544053	0.600310	0.505249	0.573115	0.515245

Table 4. Results of intermediate solutions (outcome GDP per capita Africa, GDP per capita Latin America and GDP per capita OECD).

	fsGDP Africa			fsGDP LatinAmerica			fsGDP OECD
Frequency cutoff	4			3			10
Consistency cutoff	0.8500			0.8619			0.8006
Variables	1	2		1	2		1	2	3	4	5	6
fsxdealperm	●	●		o	●		O	●		●	●	O
fsxgetcredit	O	●		O	●		O	●	●		●	O
fsxprovtmininv	O	O		●	●		o		●	●	●	●
fsxpaytax	●	o		O	O		●	o	●	●	●	o
fsxtradborders		●		O	O		O	O	O	O		O
fsxresinsolv	O	O		●	●			●	●	●	●	●
Consistency	0.8341	0.8642		0.9569	0.9546		0.9521	0.9691	0.9588	0.9248	0.9555	0.9558
Raw coverage	0.3477	0.2760		0.2338	0.2940		0.2127	0.2679	0.333494	0.3547	0.3893	0.1848
Unique coverage	0.1067	0.0350		0.0637	0.1239		0.0457	0.0237	0.0143	0.0275	0.0719	0.0126
Overall solution consistency	0.8435			0.9554			0.9297
Overall solution coverage	0.3826			0.3577			0.5447

Label: Full black circles (•) indicate the presence of a condition, and center white circles (^) indicate its absence. Large circles indicate core conditions; small ones, peripheral conditions. Blank spaces indicate “does not contribute to configuration”.

Estevão, J., Lopes, J. D., Penela, D., & Soares, J. M. (2020). The doing business ranking and the GDP. A qualitative study. Journal of Business Research, 115, 435–442. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2019.11.067

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Contractor, F. J., Dangol, R., Nuruzzaman, N., & Raghunath, S. (2020). How do country regulations and business environment impact foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows? International Business Review, 29(2), 101640. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ibusrev.2019.101640

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