Costs of doing business

The Doing Business website provides objective measures of business regulations and their enforcement. The Doing Business indicators are given for 155 countries, and give some idea of the regulatory costs imposed on business. New Zealand does well: it is actually named as best performer in the overall category of 'Doing Business' and is best performer in the sub-categories of registering property and protecting investors. Particularly interesting from my point of view are the costs, expressed in terms of average income of certain regulations. For instance: compare the costs of starting a business in sub-Saharan Africa compared with the OECD: 11 procedures, versus 7; 63 days versus 20; and 215% of per capita income versus 6.8%. Minimum capital requirements for sub-Saharan Africa and the OECD are 297% of per capita income and 41%, respectively. The website allows analysis of individual countries.