The Competitiveness Policy Evaluation Lab works closely with projects teams and governments to design, implement, and evaluate pilots that aim at improving regulatory efficiency to benefit firms. Examples are business-inspection systems, risk-management schemes for trade facilitation, and programs that promote formalization of firms.
There is a growing amount of literature discussing the role of government regulation in improving the performance of small and medium enterprises. Government regulation has been designed to promote business entry and expansion, reduce fixed costs, increase access to efficient technology and reduce demand-side constraints in emerging markets. Overall, these policies are designed to achieve the dual goal of protecting society while keeping compliance costs low. But a limited number of rigorous pilots have evaluated the effectiveness of these instruments.
The idea behind this cluster is to generate evidence on the mechanisms of regulatory interventions that can have a positive impact on firm outcomes. Further details on the cluster topic can be found in here.
In this page you will find impact evaluations funded by ComPEL and those that are sponsored by others. These have been added to this page for their relevance to this topic.
Albania:
Risk Management in Customs (technical paper) (policy brief)
Benin:
Promoting Business Registration with Entreprenant Status
Brazil:
What Governments Can do to Formalize Firms (sponsored by others)
Georgia:
Tackling Firm Informality through SME Tax Reform
Georgia:
The Role of the Business Ombudsman in Retaining Investment
Kenya:
Safety Inspections in the Health Market
Macedonia:
Risk Management in Border Technical Agency (technical paper)
Malawi:
Business Registration Impact Evaluation (BRIE)
Peru:
Business Safety Inspections
Rwanda:
Tea Pricing Reform
Serbia:
Expediting Trade through In-house Clearance (technical paper) (policy brief) (freight forwarders survey)
Tajikistan:
Introducing Electronic Tax Filing