Legal and Regulatory Risks of 'Belt and Road' Countries : An Index-Based Approach

Is the rule of law particularly weak in countries of the “Belt and Road” (B&R) initiative? Are legal and regulatory environments particularly unfriendly to businesses in B&R countries? These are questions that concern academics, policy makers, investors, and the like. In order to measure the quality of legal and regulatory environments in B&R countries on a global scale, this article develops a “B&R Index” based on the four established and reputable indexes, in order to measure the relative strengths of the B&R countries' legal and regulatory environments on a global scale. It shows that, perhaps counterintuitively, the B&R countries are, on a whole, not riskier than the global average