Ranking 42 Countries by Ease of Doing Digital Business

The World Bank’s annual Doing Business survey has been described by some as the “World Cup” or “Olympics” for governments competing to make their countries attractive to businesses. The ranking measures how easy it is to do business in a country by examining regulatory environments and is enormously influential: it has inspired more than 3,500 reforms across 190 economies; in 2017-18 alone, 128 economies undertook a record 314 reforms.

While this attention to policy responsiveness is admirable, a key element is missing from rankings such as Doing Business: they say little about the ease or difficulty of doing digital business. We aim to close this gap with the first analysis of the Ease of Doing Digital Business in 42 countries around the world. We picked these countries because they constitute the most significant markets for digital businesses worldwide and offer a consistent set of data across a wide range of indicators. We find that digital business environments require distinctive policy focuses and investments. Our evaluation is intended as a complement to that of the World Bank; it provides decision-makers a basis to compare countries not only in terms of “traditional” business-friendliness but also in terms of factors affecting setting up digital businesses.

While all businesses have elements of digital technology built into them, we define “digital businesses” as ones that have a digital platform as core to its business model. We analyzed four essential digital platforms: ecommerce platforms (e.g. Amazon, eBay); digital media platforms (e.g. YouTube, Netflix); sharing economy platforms (e.g. Uber, Airbnb); and online freelance platforms (e.g. Upwork, Toptal).

Arguably, digital businesses represent one of the most dynamic growth aspects of most major economies. In the U.S., for example, the digital economy grew 3.7 times faster in the 11 years through 2016, compared to the economy as a whole, according to the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis.

We considered some of the particular challenges digital businesses face:

They grow or shrink at different speeds and are governed by several factors that are specific to the digital ecosystems.
They face unique market resistance and competition.
Digital businesses present nuanced regulatory challenges. Rules governing the mobility of data, protection of user privacy, or net neutrality can fundamentally affect the ease of doing digital business – and these rules vary across countries.
Given their strategic value, digital businesses can be particularly important to governments. The U.S.-China rivalry is an example. Many international digital business that have tried and failed to enter China while the U.S. is home to many powerful tech companies and the U.S. government has hit companies such as Chinese digital giant, Huawei, with particularly stringent restrictions.
There are numerous other infrastructural factors that are idiosyncratic to digital businesses, such as digital access and adequate bandwidth, institutional enablers for creation of digital content and internet censorship as well as the availability of talent. Despite the power of the digital economy, these factors are not as well understood, benchmarked across countries or systematically evaluated for action by policymakers, business leaders, and investors.

Creating a Scorecard for the Ease of Doing Digital Business: Methodology

We wanted to know: how easy is it for the most significant digital platforms to enter, operate, thrive, or exit in markets around the world, and what are the primary facilitators and barriers?

We drew upon 236 variables across 42 countries from over 60 data sources comprising public databases such as those from the World Bank and the World Economic Forum, subscription services, such as GSMA and Euromonitor and proprietary sources, such as Akamai, Chartbeat, and Private Capital Research Institute. To create a composite picture of “digital business,” we considered four types of digital platforms representing distinct value propositions and the primary business models -ecommerce platforms, digital media, sharing economy platforms, and online freelance – as the leading indicators of digital business opportunities in a country.

A country’s Ease of Doing Digital Business (EDDB) score was obtained from a combination of platform-specific scores and foundational levers, as shown in the list below:

Digital platforms made up 50% of the score. They were weighted as follows:
Internet retailing/e-commerce: 20%
Digital media, defined as media and entertainment delivered through digital means: 15%
Sharing Economy/ the digital facilitation of sharing of assets between private individuals and groups: 10%
Online high-skilled freelancers using the internet to secure, complete, and deliver projects: 5%


Foundational factors made up the other 50% of the total score. They were weighted as follows:
Data accessibility, defined as the extent to which data easily transfers across and within borders, including the intensity of data flows and data restrictions. These free flows of data as well as government openness to sharing anonymized data publicly, with policies in place to safeguard user privacy: 25%
Digital and analog foundations essential for all digital platforms, across demand, supply, institutions, and innovation: 15%
World Bank Ease of Doing Business score for 2019, representing how a country performs compared to the best possible measure: 10%

The graphic below shows the EDDB and how 42 countries compare, both through EDDB performance in the aggregate and across the four digital platforms.
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