Regulatory Efficiency FAQ

Actionable data, knowledge sharing, and peer-to-peer engagement that inspire best-practice policy reform for inclusive economic growth in local business environments.

Want to learn more about the Regulatory Efficiency team? Here are some common questions and answers that may help.

Regulatory Efficiency Assessments provide a foundation for reforms that strengthen regional and sectoral competitiveness, foster economic growth, and support job creation. Using a flexible methodology, the team adapts assessments to specific economic and sectoral contexts, translating data into actionable reforms. By showing where and to what extent a location or sector falls behind good practices, these assessments promote knowledge sharing, peer learning, and evidence-based reform.

The team’s work is organized into three complementary workstreams:

i) B-READY+: This workstream is forthcoming and will focus on assessing regulatory frameworks based on B-READY assessment that affect the firm life cycle, providing insights to policymakers and practitioners, and identifying opportunities for reform.

ii) Subnational B-READY: Adapts the global methodology to local contexts, collecting actionable business regulatory data and mapping procedures step-by-step to identify bottlenecks and inform tailored reforms; and

iii) Sectoral Regulatory Assessments: Conducts in-depth studies to identify regulatory barriers in priority sectors for job creation and private investment, such as mining, energy, and tourism.

Further details on Subnational B-READY and Sectoral Regulatory Assessments can be found on the Subnational B-READY Methodology page, Subnational B-READY Manual and Guide and on the Sectoral Regulatory Assessments Methodology page, respectively.

Regulatory Efficiency Assessments select locations to reflect an economy’s diversity. In consultation with implementing counterparts, cities are chosen based on economic activity, population size, data availability, institutional and commercial infrastructure, public stakeholder interest, and alignment with World Bank Group initiatives. This approach ensures coverage of varied economic, geographic, and demographic contexts and produces a balanced view of the country’s regulatory and administrative landscape, highlighting location‑specific challenges and opportunities.

For information regarding selection of locations, please consult the Subnational B-READY Manual and Guide.

Data collection for Regulatory Efficiency Assessments relies primarily on questionnaires administered to local experts in each city or region assessed. Responses are carefully analyzed by the team and complemented with in-depth reviews of laws and regulations, as well as follow-up calls, written correspondence, in-person meetings, and country visits. The findings are further enriched with firm-level data from the World Bank Enterprise Surveys (WBES). All collected information is aggregated by topic, analyzed, and incorporated into a draft report, which undergoes technical peer review and endorsement within the World Bank Group.

Experts contributing to Regulatory Efficiency Assessments represent both the private and public sectors and are selected for their professional expertise and knowledge of local regulations. These typically include lawyers, judges, accountants, notaries, conveyancers, engineers, and other specialized practitioners.

For information regarding data collection, please consult the Subnational B-READY Manual and Guide.

Several steps are taken to ensure the validity of the data collected. The process includes rigorous quality checks and audits to confirm accuracy. Private-sector experts provide the primary inputs, which are cross-checked against publicly available information, such as laws and regulations, official websites, and published fee schedules. Public entities complete questionnaires that serve as validation instruments and sources of official input, supplemented by validation-mission meetings and statistical or administrative datasets from public agencies. Finally, the results are benchmarked against the most recently published country dataset from the global B-READY database to ensure consistency and accuracy. This multilayered approach ensures that the data used in Regulatory Efficiency Assessments are both reliable and representative of the benchmarked regions or subnational locations.

For information on data validation, please refer to the Subnational B-READY Manual and Guide.

Regulatory Efficiency Assessments provide local and national governments with diagnostic tools to identify regulatory strengths and weaknesses, benchmark performance against other regions and economies, and design more efficient, business-friendly regulations. Evidence-based insights help policymakers prioritize reforms that strengthen the business climate, attract private sector investment, foster economic growth, and spur job creation. Local officials can also learn from good practices elsewhere, adapting proven regulatory innovations to their own contexts.

The reports also serve two additional constituencies. Businesses use them as strategic resources to understand the regulatory landscape across regions and to guide investment decisions. Meanwhile, researchers and academics benefit from region-specific data that supports case studies, comparative analysis, and new insights into local governance and administrative efficiency.

For more in-depth use of the Regulatory Efficiency Assessments, please see the Impact brief on The Role of Subnational Studies in Driving Regulatory Reforms and the Comparative analysis of Local Regulatory Environments in EU regions.

The methodology for assessing regulations and collecting data balances both de jure (legal) and de facto (practical) aspects. It first examines the qualitative elements of regulatory frameworks and then assesses their implementation and efficiency. Regulatory Efficiency Assessments emphasize de facto application through detailed process mapping, which helps to:

i) Identify differences in local government requirements and practices that drive variation in procedures, time, and cost across locations;

ii) Pinpoint regulatory bottlenecks and their underlying causes; and

iii) Highlight good practices at the local level to encourage replication of successful reforms within a country.

Further details on the methodology can be found on our Subnational B-READY Methodology page, as well as in the Subnational B-READY Manual and Guide.

Over the years, Regulatory Efficiency Assessments have catalyzed reforms by identifying and addressing regulatory barriers that hindered business operations. Through comprehensive assessments and actionable recommendations, they have equipped national and local governments with tools to improve the business environment. Their positive influence is evident across several critical areas, including competitiveness, firm productivity, and job creation.

For more details on the impact previous Regulatory Efficiency Assessments have had, please see the Impact brief on The Role of Subnational Studies in Driving Regulatory Reforms. 

The Regulatory Efficiency Assessments first launched subnational reports in 2005 under the Doing Business methodology. Since then, subnational studies have spanned all regions of the world, covering more than 600 locations across 86 economies. Past assessments have been conducted in Brazil, Colombia, China, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Malaysia, Mexico, Nigeria, Peru, the Philippines, Poland, Romania, Spain, and South Africa. Previous Subnational studies can be found here.

The first study under the new Subnational Business Ready methodology, published in 2024, provided in-depth assessments of six EU economies: Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Portugal, Romania, and the Slovak Republic.

The Regulatory Efficiency team conducts sectoral studies to assess how regulations shape business activity in industries such as mining, energy, infrastructure, and tourism. These Sectoral Regulatory Assessments are in-depth subnational studies that generate primary, sector-specific data by mapping the steps, costs, timeframes, and agencies involved in starting and operating a business.

The assessments identify bottlenecks, inefficiencies, and good practices at the sectoral level, offering actionable insights to simplify compliance, lower costs, and improve investment conditions. Adaptable across sectors and tailored to government priorities, they support policymakers in designing targeted reforms that enhance productivity, create jobs, attract investment, and ultimately foster private sector growth.

Further details on the Sectoral Regulatory Assessments are available on the Sectoral Regulatory Efficiency Methodology page.

While Regulatory Efficiency Assessments provide valuable insights into the business environment at the subnational level, it is important to recognize their limitations when interpreting the findings.

First, the assessments focus primarily on formal regulations, which may not fully reflect informal practices or regional nuances that significantly affect business operations. Although informality may be indirectly captured through barriers that discourage entrepreneurs from formalizing operations, the informal sector as a whole cannot be fully assessed.

Second, the scope of the assessments is limited to specific regulatory areas most relevant to business operations. Broader factors such as security, macroeconomic stability, corruption, workforce skills, and infrastructure quality are not covered.

Finally, regulatory environments are dynamic. New laws are frequently introduced and existing ones amended. The reports therefore provide a snapshot of the regulatory environment at a given point in time and may not capture ongoing reforms or recent changes.

Further details on the methodology are available on the Subnational B-READY Methodology page, Sectoral Regulatory Assessments Methodology page as well as in the Subnational B-READY Manual and Guide.

More About Us

The team provides actionable data, promotes knowledge sharing, and facilitates peer-to-peer engagement to inspire best-practice policy reforms that foster job creation and drive inclusive economic growth in local business environments.

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