2004, Hallward-Driemeier, Mary

Drawing on the World Bank's surveys of over 30,000 firms in 53 developing countries and Doing Business indicators in 130 countries, this paper provide new insights into both the perceptions of local entrepreneurs about constraints they face, but also objective measures of infrastructure quality, regulatory burdens, crime, access to finance, and the security of property rights at the country level. Doing Business indicators give the costs of fully complying with various regulatory procedures. Together, the formal requirements and the actual experience of different types of firms illustrate the scope for investment climate improvements. The potential gains, in terms of increased productivity, investment and job growth are considerable. That smaller firms face costs that are up to a third higher underscores that improving investment climate conditions will disproportionately benefit small firms.

2004-06, Dollar, David, Hallward-Driemeier, Mary, Mengistae, Taye

Drawing on recently completed firm-level surveys in Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Honduras, India, Nicaragua, Pakistan, and Peru, this paper investigates the relationship between investment climate and international integration. These standardized surveys of large, random samples of firms in common sectors reveal how firms experience bottlenecks and delays in hard infrastructure such as power and telecom as well as in soft infrastructure such as customs administration. The authors focus primarily on measures of the time or monetary cost of different bottlenecks (e.g., days to clear goods through customs, days to get a telephone line, sales lost to power outages). For many of these costs, the obstacles are lower in China than in the South Asian or Latin American countries. There is also systematic variation across cities within countries. The authors estimate a probit function for the probability that a randomly chosen firm is foreign-invested and a separate probit for the probability that a randomly chosen firm is an exporter. These measures of international integration are higher where investment climate is better. For locations to take advantage of opportunities in the international market, they need good infrastructure and a sound regulatory environment. The interaction of openness and sound investment climate creates a good environment for investment and production. This paper helps explain why China has been so successful over the past decade, both in terms of integration and of rapid growth, while other countries have had varied success.