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The Development Effectiveness of the Use of Doing Business Indicators

Acknowledgments

Andrew Stone, lead evaluation specialist, led this evaluation for the Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) Financial, Private Sector, and Sustainable Development Department, under the guidance of José Candido Carbajo Martinez, director, IEG Financial, Private Sector, and Sustainable Development, and Alison Evans, director-general of IEG.

Nadia Paola Ramirez Abarca led the portfolio analysis and coordinated the analyst team, which included Ayooluwa Olusola Adewole, Mariana Calderon Cerbon, Regina Legarreta, Victor Malca, Anna Mortara, Ozlem Onerci, Nathaniel Russell, and Rasec Niembro Urista. Case study authors included Amitava Banerjee, Andrew Stone, Anjali Kumar, Anna Mortara, Ayooluwa Adewole, Jingwen Zhen, Nadia Ramirez, Paul Holden, Rasec Urista, Regina Legarreta, and Riad al Khouri, with Emily Harwitt and Mujtaba Basij Rasikh. Deep dives studies were authored by Ayooluwa Adewole (getting credit), Paul Holden (starting a business), Regina Legarreta and Anna Mortara (paying taxes), Andrew Stone (trading across borders), and Rasec Urista (dealing with construction permits), as well as Ana Belen Barbeito (International Finance Corporation advisory services) and Melvin Vaz (Project Performance Assessment Reports). Giuseppe Iarossi (with Silvia Espinosa) and Anqing Shi authored statistical and econometric analytic inputs. Paul Fenton-Villar authored the structured literature review. Harsh Anuj worked with the team to produce the supervised machine learning inputs, and Ariya Hagh provided quality control on the econometrics. Emelda Cudilla provided administrative support and formatted the report.

Helpful comments and guidance were received from external peer reviewers: Dean Judith Kelley, Vijaya Ramachandran, and Vincent Palmade, with Alvaro Gonzalez. Further guidance was provided by an ad hoc advisory panel composed of Jaime Roberto Diaz, Jeffrey Chelsky, Marialisa Motta, and Peter Lanjouw. Jozef Leonardus Vaessen advised the team on methods. The team thanks key counterparts in the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation. We particularly thank Deepa Chakrapani, Aart Kraay, Zhenwei Qiang, Martin Raiser, Rita Ramalho, and Sylvie Solf for important interactions during this evaluation’s preparation, as well as the 10 country teams and offices that facilitated virtual missions. However, IEG bears sole responsibility for the content of this evaluation.