This project will support an Academic Advisory Board (AAB) for 5 years to oversee, advise, and review the work of the Atlantic Council’s (AC’s) new Entrepreneurship Policy Tracker (EPT) product. This board will ensure that this new EPT index is in keeping with the highest standards of excellence and integrity.
The EPT product will provide annual rankings on the business regulatory environment in all countries of the world, with a particular focus on startup businesses and SMEs. The aggregate ranking of a country in the EPT consists of sub-indices that reflect the legal and regulatory environment for business institutions, including business entry and legal costs/barriers, infrastructure, land regulation, finance, credit, investor protection, taxation and international trade.
The AAB offers to provide oversight of the following areas for the sub-indices and overall index:
● Methodology of sub-index construction: At the level of each sub-index, the AAB would evaluate and periodically review whether the appropriate methodologies are being used across countries to capture each sub-index that enters the EPT, with recommendations made for improvement.
● Methodology of overall index: At the level of index assembly, this includes indicator definitions, weightings, and aggregation methods.
● Data quality assessment: The AAB would examine the protocols for data collection and cleaning, including the processes of identifying anomalies, inconsistencies, or potential bias in country responses, and make recommendations for improvement.
● Transparency: The AAB would evaluate and comment on the transparency of the index construction process, including methodological decisions, data sources, and scoring rubrics.
● Integrity and governance: The AAB will provide regular assessment of the extent to which the index and its components and underlying data have been properly shielded against political influence.
