as the understanding of new laws (OECD 2019). A recent World Bank study explores critical considerations for effectively engaging the private sector, along with channels and mechanisms that have been successfully leveraged; it draws from cross-country experiences and sheds light on the importance of effectively engaging the private sector (World Bank 2020).

# **2.3. Other data sources**

The Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) provide aggregate and individual governance indicators for 200 countries and territories over the period 1996-2021, for six dimensions of governance: voice and accountability, political stability and absence of violence / terrorism, government effectiveness, regulatory quality, rule of law, control of corruption.

The OECD Indicators of Regulatory Policy and Governance (iREG), based on the 2021 OECD Regulatory Indicators Survey results, present up-to-date evidence of 39 OECD member countries’ regulatory policy and governance practices.<sup>2</sup> The iREG indicators broadly measure three key principles on stakeholder engagement, regulatory impact analysis, and ex-post evaluations. In particular, the composite indicator on stakeholder engagement for developing regulations measures the adoption of good regulatory practices to engage with affected parties when developing new regulations, including different methods and openness of consultations, as well as transparency and feedback mechanisms. Despite advances in these and other aggregate measures of ‘governance’, however, there is no global database providing objective, quantitative, and comparable measures on existing administrative and institutional arrangements that enable business regulatory reforms.

# **3. Building the Methodology**

The methodology for _Business Reform Committees_ was developed in several steps. First, a conceptual framework was developed, drawing on as much feedback as possible from experts across the World Bank and from other organizations that have worked on similar initiatives (such as the OECD). Second, the team designed the questionnaire and disseminated it to more than 200 government officials in the two rounds of data collection of the project. Namely, in the first round of the project, the team reached out to 127 countries and territories; in the second, to 188. Outreach included email correspondence and phone calls. The final dataset is the result of the combined response rates in the two rounds of data collection across 160 economies. The team validated the responses using available resources, including official government laws, regulations, and decrees. The dataset also benefited from peer-review from expert reviewers from the World Bank Group.

# **3.1. Development of the conceptual framework**

Following the review of the literature and assessment of available data sources, the next step in the process was to develop the framework of the study, for which the team engaged extensively with experts from within and outside the World Bank Group. The World Development Report 2017: Governance and the Law (World Bank 2017) was also extensively referenced. The team decided on a definition of a _business reform committee_ (see Box 1) and identified as key the following three elements: 1) mandate and scope of the business reform committee; 2) organizational structure and operational framework; and 3) stakeholder engagement and communication.

> 2 For more information on OECD Indicators of Regulatory Policy and Governance (iREG): <u>https://www.oecd.org/gov/regulatory-policy/indicators-regulatory-policy-and-governance.htm</u>

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