Doing Business 2018: Reforming to Create Jobs

Fifteenth in a series of annual reports comparing business regulation in 190 economies, Doing Business 2018 measures aspects of regulation affecting 10 areas of everyday business activity:
Starting a business
Dealing with construction permits
Getting electricity
Registering property
Getting credit
Protecting minority investors
Paying taxes
Trading across borders
Enforcing contracts
Resolving insolvency
These areas are included in the distance to frontier score and ease of doing business ranking. Doing Business also measures features of labor market regulation, which is not included in these two measures.
The report updates all indicators as of June 1, 2017, ranks economies on their overall "ease of doing business", and analyzes reforms to business regulation–identifying which economies are strengthening their business environment the most.
Doing Business illustrates how reforms in business regulations are being used to analyze economic outcomes for domestic entrepreneurs and for the wider economy. It is a flagship product produced in partnership by the World Bank Group that garners worldwide attention on regulatory barriers to entrepreneurship. More than 137 economies have used the Doing Business indicators to shape reform agendas and monitor improvements on the ground. In addition, the Doing Business data has generated over 2,182 articles in peer-reviewed academic journals since its inception.
Data Notes; Distance to Frontier and Ease of Doing Business Ranking; and Summaries of Doing Business Reforms in 2016/17 can be downloaded separately from the Doing Business website.