Place Based Economic Development with Simon White

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Business Environment Reform

Simon White | Specialist in policies and programs for more enabling business environments.

New guidlines on business environment reform and the informal economy

The Donor Committee for Enterprise Development (DCED) has recently published guidelines for donor and development agencies on business environment reform and the informal economy. I was the principal author of this document, which was based on a discussion paper (see below), a major conference held in Cape Town in April

Doing Business 2012

The World Bank Group’s Doing Business team have just released the annual report for this year: Doing Business 2012: Doing Business in a More Transparent World. This is the ninth in a series of annual reports comparing business regulations in 183 economies. It measures regulations affecting 11 areas of

Local entrepreneurship ecosystems

New from the Startup Foundation with support from the Kauffman Foundation, this site focuses on startup communities are around the world. The site asks people in the target cities to add their initiatives and events. It seeks to map local entrepreneurship ecosystems. In July of 2011, Startup Weekend and The

Promoting competitive industries in a high-growth country

This interesting post from the World Bank’s blog on private sector development cites Ricardo Hausmann, Professor of Economic Development at the John F. Kennedy School of Government and Director of Harvard’s Center of International Development and Dani Rodrik, Professor of International Political Economy at the Kennedy School and

Creating entrepreneurial business environments

A key ingredient of entrepreneurship is risk. Doing things differently, inventing and producing different things, and providing different services… all this entails risk. Entrepreneurs invest in doing things differently and the outcomes of this investment are unpredictable. In fact, these investments are more likely to fail than not. Governments stifle

The role of government

In efforts to promote entrepreneurship and innovation most attention is given how to development entrepreneurs. While it is generally recognised that there is no entrepreneurial gene that is passed on from one generation to the next and that entrepreneurs are made and not born entrepreneurial, a high degree of attention

Streamlining and Shortening Licensing Processes Through a One-Stop-Shop Facility (the One-stop Business Facilitation Centre)

As a small landlocked country surrounded by South Africa, one would think that making import and export easier for local businesses is a critical issue. How else can business obtain access to the markets they require to expand and employ people? However, Doing Business 2010 reports that it takes 44