Reframing the debate

Benito Arruñada is guest blogging at Organizations and Markets. His first post states:

One of my recent research areas is the cost of business formalization. In particular, I have criticized the World Bank’s Doing Business project for the narrow focus of its “Starting a Business” indicator on reducing the initial costs of incorporating companies (Arruñada, 2007,  2009), which disregards the more important role of business registers as a source of reliable information for judges, which is essential for reducing transaction costs in future business dealings.

Part of Professor Arruñada’s argument is that the Doing Business indicators do not capture all the relevant components of the business environment. The writers of the Doing Business 2009 report agree. They state:

Doing Business does not measure all aspects of the business environment that matter to firms or investors—or all factors that affect competitiveness. It does not, for example, measure security, macroeconomic stability, corruption, the labor skills of the population, the underlying strength of institutions or the quality of infrastructure. Nor does it focus on regulations specific to foreign investment.

So far the two sides don’t sound that different. So what is the argument about?

I believe that the debate is not mainly about what Doing Business measures. Really, the debate is about how these measures are used in shaping public policy. Critics of Doing Business are concerned that countries will ignore the above warnings and only reform in areas that are measured in Doing Business.

Are the critics right? Do governments only adopt reforms that show up in the Doing Business rankings? Or could it be that governments simply use Doing Business as a source of valuable information with the goal of adopting any reform that would be good for their countries?