 Having a civil law regime does not prevent a country from scoring well on the DB rankings. France, for example, ranks 12th in starting a business; it has fast and inexpensive processes and no minimum capital requirement. It also ranks 14th in enforcing contracts. Countries can improve their scores and rankings within a civil law framework. Take, for example, Tunisia, a middle-income civil law country ranked 88th on EODB.
- If it improved its score on difficulty of firing to the same level as Belgium, it could improve its EODB ranking by 16 positions.
- Opening a business in Tunisia is fairly efficient in terms of time and cost. If it eliminated the minimum capital requirement, like France, it would further improve its EODB ranking by 11 positions.
Even countries at the bottom of the rankings can improve. Of the 26 Sub-Saharan countries with a civil law tradition, 24 are in the bottom quartile of the overall ranking. Mali, ranked 158th in ease of doing business, could improve substantially by following the model of Morocco or Tunisia. For example, if Mali reduced the number of procedures, days and minimum capital requirement to start a business to the level of Morocco, it would improve 13 positions in the overall ranking. Likewise, improving the procedures for enforcing contracts and trading across borders to the level of Tunisia would improve Mali’s overall ranking by 26 positions, allowing it to move out of the bottom quartile.
If a hypothetical civil law economy were constructed combining the scores of the highest-scoring civil law country on each indicator, it would place third in the overall ranking.
Note: Calculations based on the Doing Business 2008
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