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This paper evaluates a number of univariate and multivariate time-series forecasting models of selected indicator variables for three Canadian provinces: Alberta, British Columbia and Manitoba. The out of sample forecasts from these models are compared not only with themselves but with common indicators from the quarterly provincial forecast model of the Conference Board of Canada. The concepts of directional accuracy, the conditional efficiency, and the robust regression are used in evaluating the forecasts. In most cases, the strategy of combining forecasts produced superior results to those given by the Conference Board of Canada.

AbstractWe argue that the World Bank has successfully marshaled the Ease of Doing Business (EDB) Index to amass considerable influence over business regulations worldwide. The Ease of Doing is a global performance indicator (GPI), and GPIs—especially those that rate and rank states against one another—are intended to package information to influence the views of an audience important to the target, such as foreign investors or voters, thus generating pressures that induce a change in the target's behavior. The World Bank has succeeded in shaping the global regulatory environment even though the bank has no explicit mandate over regulatory policy and despite questions about EDB accuracy and required policy tradeoffs. We show that the EDB has a dominating market share among business climate indicators. We then use media analyses and observational data to show that EDB has motivated state regulatory shifts. States respond to being publicly ranked and some restructure bureaucracies accordingly. Next we explore plausible influence channels for the EDB ranking and use an experiment involving US portfolio managers to build on existing economics research and examine whether the rankings influence investor sentiment within the experiment. Using a case study of India's multiyear interagency effort to rise in the EDB rankings, as well as its decision to create subnational EDB rankings, we bring the strands of the argument together by showing how politicians see the ranking as affecting domestic politics, altering investor sentiment, and engaging bureaucratic reputation. Overall, a wide variety of evidence converges to illustrate the pressures through which the World Bank has used state rankings to achieve its vision of regulatory reform.

In the current process of globalization, the merging of countries in the social, cultural, political as well as economic matters is taking place. Economic area is mainly represented by the legal units that generate profit. These units bring along creation of jobs, reduction in unemployment, increase of the living standards of the population and thus also increase of the purchasing power of population and related development. EU cohesion policy is aimed to support the least developed regions in the European Union in order to ensure their growth, competitiveness and elimination of regional disparities. One of the tasks is to promote a business environment, which is one of the most important indicators of regional development. The paper deals with the analysis of statistical data of the business environment in the context of regional disparities. The aim of this paper is to analyze the structure of the business environment in Slovakia and examine trends in the number of legal units of individual forms. Through findings it is possible to identify changes among socio-economic situation in regions.

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Recent years have seen a significant focus in the literature on growth and development on the idea that legal and political institutions are the key determinant of economic development. The main finding of this paper is that the focus on the primacy of legal and political institutions may be misplaced and that business-friendly economic policies (proxied for here by the World Bank's Doing Business indicator) are the key determinant of the level of income per capita. We find that a country's Doing Business rank dominates a range of measures of legal and political institutional quality as an explanatory variable for income per capita. We also find the Doing Business rank to be a key explanatory variable for economic growth and that previous findings assigning a significant role to educational attainment are not robust to the inclusion of this new indicator in growth regressions.

SummaryRecent years have seen a significant focus in the literature on growth and development on the idea that legal and political institutions are the key determinant of economic development. The main finding of this paper is that the focus on the primacy of legal and political institutions may be misplaced and that business‐friendly economic policies (proxied for here by the World Bank's Doing Business indicator) are the key determinant of the level of income per capita. We find that a country's Doing Business rank dominates a range of measures of legal and political institutional quality as an explanatory variable for income per capita. We also find the Doing Business rank to be a key explanatory variable for economic growth and that previous findings assigning a significant role to educational attainment are not robust to the inclusion of this new indicator in growth regressions.