This is long overdue.
As background, a 🧵 of 🧵s on the Doing Business drama...
As background, a 🧵 of 🧵s on the Doing Business drama...
1. Here are the original 2018 allegations of data manipulation:
2. Here's our analysis showing World Bank methodological changes, not reform, explained India's rise.
3. The World Bank issued multiple responses to these claims, some of which we analyzed here:
4. More recently, Dems on Capitol Hill have taken issue with the index's extreme anti-tax stance -- which the Bank has now promised to review.
In sum, Doing Business is:
- grounded in anti-regulatory, anti-tax ideology
- methodologically dubious, even if you accept its aims, and
- opens up deep conflicts of interest between the World Bank and favored clients like Modi's India and Saudi Arabia.
- grounded in anti-regulatory, anti-tax ideology
- methodologically dubious, even if you accept its aims, and
- opens up deep conflicts of interest between the World Bank and favored clients like Modi's India and Saudi Arabia.
I have no idea which of these issues explains the announcement today that Doing Business is being suspended -- or perhaps some new scandal has been uncovered internally?
But given Doing Business's history, the World Bank should think long and hard before relaunching it.
But given Doing Business's history, the World Bank should think long and hard before relaunching it.
