Book excerpt: The Doing Business series provides research, data, and analysis on regulation in 181 economies across 10 areas of the business life cycle. Doing Business 2009 identifies top reformers in business regulation and highlights best practices and global reform trends. This year s report builds upon the five previous editions, adding new economies and updating all indicators. This year s report covers 3 additional economies, bringing the total number of economies covered to 181. Now included are the Bahamas, Bahrain, and Qatar. The report also adds a preface on Doing Business methodology, as well as in-depth analysis throughout the report on the main trends and findings of the past six years of Doing Business. Doing Business is an invaluable resource for entrepreneurs, investors, advisors, academics, professionals, and policymakers. The indicators benchmark regulation across 10 areas of a typical business lifecycle, and are used to analyze economic and social outcomes that matter such as equal opportunity, unemployment, poverty, and growth. This annually-published report gives policymakers the ability to measure regulatory performance in comparison to other economies, and learn from best practices.