The Doing Business project, led by Simeon Djankov and Caralee McLiesh, provides objective measures of business regulations and their enforcement. The Doing Business indicators are comparable across 145 economies. They indicate the regulatory costs of business and can be used to analyze specific regulations that enhance or constrain investment, productivity and growth.
I helped to edit the latest report on the project’s findings, Doing Business in 2005.
http://rru.worldbank.org/DoingBusiness/