The World Bank’s annual Ease of Doing Business report sheds light on how easy or difficult it is for a local entrepreneur to open and run a small to medium-size business in 190 economies. New data shows Ireland has improved its ranking this year and is now ranked 17th in the world and 4th in the Euro area.

The Doing Business project provides objective measures of business regulations and their enforcement across 190 economies and selected cities at the subnational and regional level. The Doing Business project, launched in 2002, looks at domestic small and medium-size companies and measures the regulations applying to them through their life cycle.

Doing Business captures several important dimensions of the regulatory environment as it applies to local firms. It provides quantitative indicators on regulation for starting a business, dealing with construction permits, getting electricity, registering property, getting credit, protecting minority investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts and resolving insolvency. Doing Business also measures features of labor market regulation.

View the full report here.