Where should I emigrate?

Our top four - New Zealand, the U.S., Canada, and Australia - place relatively few hurdles in the path of business owners. In each nation it takes between two and five days to start a business and requires five or fewer steps to do so. Those nations impose relatively low marginal tax rates too. That's critical, says William Bygrave, a professor at Babson and director of the GEM project, because it helps business launchers- and the friends, relatives, and angels who support them - accumulate savings for seed money.

Those nations also have in common legal systems that protect intellectual property, enforce contracts, and provide relatively rapid adjudication of disputes. Poland, which at No. 44 tops our bottom ten, is notorious for its sclerotic courts: To settle a claim of unpaid receivables takes upwards of 1,000 business days.

In general, Latin America fares poorly. Despite efforts to streamline launch processes in Brazil - the World Bank applauds new online systems in some states - it still takes 17 steps to register a business. Brazil has many people starting businesses, mostly entrepreneurs by necessity, but produces ambitious entrepreneurs such as Veloso at less than half the U.S. rate.

Most and least friendly countries to small biz
Rank Country FSB Score
1 New Zealand 2.03
2 United States 2.01
3 Canada 1.99
4 Australia 1.93
5 Singapore 1.88
6 Hong Kong, China 1.86
7 United Kingdom 1.85
8 Ireland 1.85
9 Denmark 1.75
10 Iceland 1.75
11 Norway 1.70
12 Sweden 1.64
13 Japan 1.64
14 Finland 1.60
15 Thailand 1.60
16 Chile 1.59
17 Israel 1.59
18 Latvia 1.57
19 Switzerland 1.57
20 France 1.50
21 Jamaica 1.49
22 Netherlands 1.45
23 Belgium 1.45
24 Germany 1.37
25 Portugal 1.36
26 Peru 1.33
27 South Africa 1.32
28 Malaysia 1.31
29 Colombia 1.29
30 Russia 1.29
31 Austria 1.28
32 Mexico 1.26
33 Turkey 1.26
34 Korea 1.25
35 Czech Republic 1.24
36 Italy 1.20
37 Taiwan, China 1.15
38 Spain 1.11
39 Hungary 1.11
40 Slovenia 1.10
41 Uganda 1.05
42 China 1.05
43 Argentina 1.04
44 Poland 1.02
45 Croatia 0.95
46 India 0.94
47 Jordan 0.94
48 Uruguay 0.92
49 Ecuador 0.92
50 Brazil 0.92
51 Philippines 0.90
52 Greece 0.76
53 Indonesia 0.61