A strong and growing private sector is a critical factor for the promotion of growth and the increase of opportunities for all. A vibrant business sector would mean economic investment, job creation, improvement in overall productivity, and an increase in the economic pie for all those involved in a society. To foster the growth of a legal business sector, governments and policy makers around the world have been interested in learning about effective policies and implementing wide-ranging reforms. This general policy climate which supports and enhances the growth of the formal private business sector has been called a business-enabling environment.

The fundamental premise is that growth of the official business sector of economic activity requires good regulations, strong economic fundamentals, and a nourishing sociopolitical structure. The question to which this dissertation responds is which of these factors are quantitatively significant in describing the number of registered businesses worldwide and how these factors compare to each other when they are tested econometrically beside each other.

Would the ease of doing business variables still be significant in describing the number of registered businesses when it is compared to fundamental macro policy factors such as corporate tax rate? How far does business bribery affect business growth?

This dissertation presents an effort to quantitatively analyze these factors and their effects on the business growth worldwide. It also offers an estimate on the amount of annual business to government bribery around the world disaggregated to a national level. It offers an estimation of national annual bribes paid by the business sector to governments, in each country worldwide, in the currency of that country at the time, and the equivalent amount in US dollars.