January 15, 2018

Paul Romer Explains the “Doing Business” Ranking FUBAR

I don’t want to spend forever on the controversy over the World Bank’s “Doing Business” rankings, but Paul Romer put up a post today that shows what kind of effect the new ranking methodology had on Chile. Here it is:

The new rankings (light orange) started in 2013 and showed Chile improving under its conservative president. Then Chile’s ranking fell substantially starting in 2014, when socialist Michelle Bachelet took office.

If the old ranking methodology (dark orange) had been used throughout this period, Chile’s rank would have fallen substantially under the conservative president and then stayed pretty much flat under Bachelet.

I have no idea how much difference this made to anything. As for how it happened, Romer says, “the fundamental failure can be traced back to a lack of clarity in our communication.” Stay tuned.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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