“Open for Business?” —Transparent government and business regulation

Abstract

We present new indicators for 185 economies measuring the accessibility of business regulatory information and show that the new data can serve as meaningful proxies for the overall transparency of governments and that the new data have explanatory power for the quality of business regulation. We find the regulatory environment to be most opaque in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East and North Africa, where businesses can often only access basic regulatory information by meeting a government official. By contrast, in the OECD and Eastern Europe and Central Asia access is more direct via websites, public billboards and brochures. Moreover, OECD economies are more consistent in their transparency efforts across different government agencies. We also find that while resources as proxied by income levels play some role in explaining why some economies make more information easily accessible than others, they are not the only determining factor; regardless of income more democratic governments tend to make greater transparency efforts. Finally, we find that easier access to basic regulatory information is associated with greater regulatory quality and less corruption.