Why the World Bank Retired the Index
For nearly two decades, the World Bank’s Doing Business (DB) report was the de facto standard for evaluating business environments across countries. Published annually from 2003 to 2020, it ranked 190 economies on ten indicators including starting a business, registering property, paying taxes, and enforcing contracts.
In September 2021, the World Bank officially discontinued the report following an internal investigation that uncovered data irregularities in the 2018 and 2020 editions. Rankings for China, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Azerbaijan had been manipulated under pressure from senior Bank officials and country representatives. The investigation concluded that the ranking methodology itself created perverse incentives—countries gamed specific indicators rather than pursuing genuine reforms.
The Bank introduced a replacement initiative called Business Ready (B-READY) in 2023, which takes a broader approach to measuring business climate. However, B-READY is still in its early stages, covers fewer countries, uses a fundamentally different methodology, and does not provide the composite ranking that made the original index so widely used.
What Is Missing Now
The retirement of Doing Business left a significant gap in the market intelligence landscape, particularly for small and mid-size companies:
- No single-number comparison. Decision-makers used the DB ranking as a quick heuristic. B-READY provides pillar scores but avoids a single composite ranking, making country-to-country comparison less intuitive.
- Incomplete country coverage. B-READY’s initial release covered 50 economies, expanding incrementally. For companies evaluating markets in Africa, Central Asia, or the Pacific, data gaps remain substantial.
- No bilateral dimension. Doing Business measured domestic regulatory environments only. It never accounted for the friction between two countries—trade barriers, cultural distance, logistics costs, or sanctions exposure.
- No real-time updates. The DB report was annual. In a world where trade policy uncertainty has risen 125% since 2019, annual snapshots are insufficient.
- Enterprise pricing walls. Commercial alternatives like the Economist Intelligence Unit, Fitch Solutions, and Verisk Maplecroft provide excellent data but start at $15,000+/year—far beyond reach for startups and SMBs.
How Nexus Fills the Gap
Nexus was built specifically to address these shortcomings. It synthesizes 25+ free public data sources into composite friction scores across five dimensions, providing a modern, transparent alternative to the retired ranking.
Composite Scoring Across Five Dimensions
Rather than measuring only domestic regulation, Nexus evaluates countries across political, economic, legal, cultural, and logistic friction. Each dimension draws from multiple authoritative sources (WGI, Heritage, Transparency International, Hofstede, World Bank LPI, and others), producing a 0–100 composite score where higher numbers indicate more friction.
Bilateral Friction Analysis
Nexus is one of the few platforms that scores the friction between two specific countries, not just within one. This is critical for real-world market entry decisions: expanding from the US to Japan involves fundamentally different friction than expanding from Germany to Japan.
195 Countries, Updated Continuously
Coverage spans all 195 recognized sovereign states. Data pipelines run on automated schedules, pulling the latest available indicators as sources publish them—not once a year, but continuously.
Full Source Transparency
Every score links back to its underlying indicators and original data source. Nexus never hides its methodology behind proprietary black boxes. You can see exactly which indicators contribute to each dimension, how they are normalized, and how weights are applied.
Comparison: World Bank DB vs Nexus
| Feature | World Bank DB | B-READY | Nexus |
|---|---|---|---|
| Status | Discontinued (2021) | Active (limited) | Active |
| Country coverage | 190 | 50 (expanding) | 195 |
| Composite ranking | Yes | No (pillar scores) | Yes (0–100) |
| Bilateral analysis | No | No | Yes |
| Update frequency | Annual | Annual | Continuous |
| Dimensions | 10 regulatory | 3 pillars | 5 friction |
| Cultural dimension | No | No | Yes |
| Sanctions monitoring | No | No | Yes (OFAC/EU/UK) |
| Simulations | No | No | Yes (what-if) |
| Price | Free (was) | Free | Free / $29/mo |
Who Benefits Most
Nexus is designed for the organizations that relied most heavily on Doing Business and now lack a practical alternative:
- Startups evaluating first export markets who need structured data without enterprise contracts.
- SMBs expanding internationally who want to benchmark target markets against each other before committing resources.
- Consultants and advisory firms who need to generate country risk reports for clients without building datasets from scratch.
- Development organizations and NGOs that used DB rankings for program targeting and need a replacement data source.
Try It
Nexus offers a free tier that includes dashboard access, three country risk reports per month, and a five-country watchlist. You can explore friction scores for any country, compare bilateral friction between country pairs, and generate PDF reports —all without a credit card.
If you relied on the World Bank Doing Business ranking and have been looking for a practical replacement, create a free Nexus account and see how it compares.