A new approach to prioritizing SME regulation reforms

Purpose – Despite their important role for small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) policy reform, the individual scores of the ten categories of business regulations in the World Bank’s Doing Business report are often overshadowed by the equal-weighted overall score and ease of doing business ranking. The purpose of this paper is to examine the causal interrelations between category scores and pinpoint the critical categories for reform. Design/methodology/approach – Based on the latest 2016 Doing Business report, this paper applies the four-stage integrative framework to investigate the causal relationships between category scores and the overall score for business regulations for SMEs. The four-stage analysis includes cluster analysis, data mining, partial least square path modeling, and importance-performance map analysis (IPMA). Findings – The overall score for business regulations is not only influenced by the direct effects of the category scores but also by the indirect effects of the causal interrelations between these scores. The IPMA suggests that policy-makers should examine the priorities of the category scores before making a decision about business regulatory reforms for SMEs. This paper suggests that policy-makers should allocate resources in order of priority – to resolving insolvency, getting credit, trading across borders, registering property, protecting minority investors, paying taxes, enforcing contracts, getting electricity, dealing with construction permits, and, finally, starting a business. Originality/value – This four-stage methodology is the first attempt to construct a roadmap for business regulatory reforms for SMEs that addresses the problem of equal weighting and subjective causal relationships between category scores.