The Updated Investment Facilitation Index

The Investment Facilitation Index (IFI) provides information on the current adoption of investment facilitation measures at country level for 142 World Trade Organisation (WTO) Members. It was developed by the German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS), previously known as the Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik / German Development Institute (DIE), in cooperation with the WTO. The IFI is a composite index measuring the adoption of investment facilitation measures in 2021 and applying a multiple binary scoring scheme. Departing from an earlier version of the index (Berger et al., 2021), it has been conceptually revised and extended regarding its country coverage. It now consists of 101 measures composing six regulatory dimensions and corresponds closely to the main policy areas and developments within current policy debates, including the newly negotiated Investment Facilitation for Development (IFD) Agreement among the WTO Members.

The data set provides the foundation for analysing specific facilitation hurdles in investment frameworks of a large number of economies. The fine grained data of the IFI can be used for investigating economic benefits and challenges of investment facilitation reforms, support the assessment of implementation gaps, as well as prioritisation of technical assistance and capacity development. It can also be used by investors seeking information on a country’s investment regime.

For a detailed description of the methodology and coding of the IFI, please have a look at the uploaded data documentation, contained in the file ifi_documentation.pdf. It provides information on the conceptual composition of the index, its evolution from the first version, as well as the coding, data generation and validation processes. In the annex, it also features a detailed overview of each measure contained in the index.

The file ifi_codebook.csv contains the codebook for the 101 investment facilitation measures included in the IFI. The file features six variables (columns):

• Measure: The code of a measure under observation;
• Area: Specification of the policy area a given measure belongs to;
• Measure_Description: A short description of what investment facilitation feature is evaluated by a given measure;
• Weight: Specification of the individual weight of a measure, the product of the allocated score (0, 1 or 2) and this weight denotes the contribution to the total score of a given measure;
• Unit: The measurement unit for the answer of a given measure, it can take values "Score", meaning that the answer is directly measured by score from the multiple binary scoring scheme, or specify another measurement unit, e.g. number of documents, days, US Dollars, etc.;
• Coding_0: Specifies the answer coding which allocates a score of 0 to this measure;
• Coding_1: Specifies the answer coding which allocates a score of 1 to this measure;
• Coding_2: Specifies the answer coding which allocates a score of 2 to this measure.

The file ifi_table.csv or ifi_table.xlsx (please choose your preferred file format) contains all 14484 data points resulting from the 101 measures coded for 142 economies. Moreover, it also contains the total score for each country calculated by applying the expert weighting scheme. The file contains the following variables (columns):

• CountryCode: ISO-alpha3 code of a country for which a given measure is coded;
• Country: Name of a country for which a given measure is coded;
• Measure: Code of a measure that is coded in a given row;
• Area: Specification of the policy area a given measure belongs to;
• Measure_Description: A short description of what investment facilitation feature is evaluated by a given measure;
• Answer: The answer coded for a given measure and country;
• Score: The allocated score based on the answer, according to the definition of the measure (see codebook);
• Unit: The measurement unit for the answer of a given measure;
• Coding: The answer option coded for a given measure and country (corresponds to either Coding_0, Coding_1 or Coding_2 in the codebook);
• Source: Source statement for the provided answer.

For further inquiries please contact the authors.