Title: South American business environment cost index: reforms for Brazil

Authors: Petr Ekel; Patrícia Bernardes; Gláucia Maria Vasconcellos Vale; Matheus Pereira Libório

Addresses: Pontifical Catholic University of Minas Gerais, Brazil ' Pontifical Catholic University of Minas Gerais, Brazil ' Pontifical Catholic University of Minas Gerais, Brazil ' Pontifical Catholic University of Minas Gerais, Brazil

Abstract: The World Bank's ease-of-doing-business index (EDBI) is the most popular instrument for measuring countries' business environment conditions. Although useful to direct investments and guide reforms, researchers associate EDBI with problems such as analyses from very different countries, and data quality and calculation errors. This research seeks to overcome these problems with two objectives. First, to propose the South American Business environment cost index (BE-cost-index). Second, identify which cost sub-indicators most impact the business environment in Brazil. Principal component analysis is employed to construct the BE-cost-index. The opinion of Brazilian entrepreneurs and the analytical hierarchy process are used to identify the sub-indicators that most impact the business environment in Brazil. The contribution of the research is to offer useful information to guide/prioritise reforms that improve the quality of the business environment.

Keywords: multivariate analysis; multicriteria analysis; composite indicators; business environment; investment attraction.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBE.2022.121973

International Journal of Business Environment, 2022 Vol.13 No.2, pp.212 - 233

Received: 18 May 2021
Accepted: 07 Sep 2021
Published online: 07 Apr 2022 *

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