The Wall Street Journal today reports that the World Bank will release a report tomorrow on business regulations that concludes that the less business is regulated, the healthier is the economy. But why wait until tomorrow for the report?: it’s right here. The report features an incredible array of data, all nicely assembled. The broad category of regulations considered are: credit markets, entry regulations, bankruptcy, contract enforcement, and labor regulations. Within each category, there is a further breakdown. For example, within labor regulation, the study puts together an Employment Laws Index:
An Employment Laws Index covers three areas: flexibility of hiring, conditions of employment, and flexibility of firing. Flexibility of hiring covers the availability of part-time, fixed-term, and family members’ contracts. Conditions of employment cover working time requirements, including mandatory minimum daily rest, maximum number of hours in a normal workweek, premium for overtime work, and restrictions on weekly holiday; mandatory payment for non-working days, which includes days of annual leave with pay and paid time off for holidays; and minimum wage legislation. Flexibility of firing covers workers’ legal protections against dismissal, including the grounds for dismissal, procedures for dismissal (individual and collective), notice period, and severance payment.
The tables are database driven and permit comparisons, so that, for example, you can look at all countries ranked by the Employment Laws Index. Hong Kong is #1 (least regulated), followed by Singapore, Zimbabwe, Malaysia, and then...the United States. Now, anyone who knows US labor regulations first hand can only shudder to think how awful it must be in Panama, Brazil, and Portugal (the bottom three on the list). There’s an enormous amount of data here, but a quick look shows that the US is ranked surprisingly low in Contract Enforcement.
