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Over the past decade, there has been increased interest in improving business regulations, in part because of the increased availability of data that can inform and monitor those improvements. This paper analyzes whether these regulatory changes are linked to economic outcomes. With panel data for 10 years across more than 180 countries, the paper establishes the link between business regulations, firm creation, and growth. It is found that an improvement of 10 points in the overall measure of business regulations is linked to an increase of around 0.5 new businesses per 1,000 adults. Moreover, the results show that although small changes in the overall level of business regulations may have a negligible link to growth, moving from the lowest quartile of improvement in business regulations to the highest quartile is associated with a significant increase in annual per capita growth of around 0.8 percentage points. In addition, the results highlight the importance of sound entry and exit regulations and sound credit market regulations and court enforcement for growth.

Macroeconomics and Economic Growth --- Private Sector Development

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The economic thinking around the role of agriculture for development has evolved since the 1950s. Over the past decades, the agriculture sector has been rediscovered as a sector with great potential for triggering growth, reducing poverty and inequality, providing food security, and delivering environmental services. This paper contributes to the literature on the determinants of agricultural development by investigating the role played by laws and regulations. First, the paper proposes new measures of regulatory quality and regulatory efficiency in agriculture. Second, the paper employs cross-section data to test the relationship of the proposed measures with agricultural performance. The results indicate that agricultural productivity is on average higher where transaction costs imposed by regulations are lower and where countries adhere to more regulatory good practices. This relationship is stronger when low transaction costs and regulatory good practices are combined.

Agribusiness --- Business Regulations --- Legal Institutions --- Structural Change

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Despite the commitments of the development community toward broader access to finance, financial inclusion rates worldwide are rather unsatisfactory. To date, around two billion adults do not have access to basic financial services such as savings and checking accounts. Attempting to bridge such gap between policy objectives and outcomes, several economists have probed the determinants of financial inclusion. This paper contributes to the debate by investigating the role played by financial regulation. First, the paper proposes a broad index of regulatory quality for financial inclusion, emphasizing the role of nontraditional delivery models, for example, branchless banking, and actors, for example, nonbank lending institutions. Second, the paper tests the relationship between regulatory quality and financial inclusion outcomes. The analysis finds that in countries where regulatory quality is within the top quartile, individuals are 12.4 percent more likely to have an account at a financial institution with respect to bottom quartile countries.

Access to finance --- Banking --- Banks and banking reform --- Broad index --- Finance and financial sector development --- Financial inclusion --- Financial services --- Financial structures --- Rates --- Regulation --- Rural development --- Rural microfinance and smes