his note reviews a growing body of literature on the "Employing Workers"
T index (EW index) developed by the World Bank as part of its "DoingBusiness" indicators (DB indicators). This controversial project represents an important attempt to measure "business regulations" and their enforcement across 178 countries, and provide a guide for evaluating regulations that directly impact on economic growth, allowing for cross-country comparisons and identification of good practice (World Bank, 2008). The key product of the DB project is an "ease-of-doing business" index. It is made up of ten sub-indices including the EW index, which measures the cost of labour market regulations. This index is a composite indicator based on measures of three elements: difficulty of hiring; rigidity of working hours; and difficulty of firing. 1 Since the DB project was launched in 2004, the World Bank's assessment of existing regulations in developing countries has been predominantly negative. Rigid labour market policies are blamed for poor labour market performance, such as low productivity, high unemployment and informal employment, while a more flexible regulatory framework is perceived to be associated with increased growth and employment creation. In a sense, then, this project can be understood as providing an empirical basis for the "augmented Washington Consensus" (Rodrik, 2005), which attributes much of the failure of the "Washington Consensus" in developing countries to the rigidity of their labour markets.