Sibel ŞENER, Hüdaverdi BİRCAN

In the decision-making process, Multi-Criteria Decision Making methods allow the Decision Maker to use more than one criterion, making it easier to identify the best alternatives. The Ease of Doing Business Index, which has a multi-criteria structure, is an index designed to examine the regulatory and legal systems that provide a business environment that will facilitate the creation and operation of small and medium-sized enterprises in order to increase the competitiveness of economies. In this study, it is aimed to rank the economies of the countries from the best to the worst according to the ease of doing business using ELECTRE III and TOPSIS methods. When the results obtained by both methods were compared with the ranking of the Ease of Doing Business Index, it was determined that the ELECTRE III method performed better than the TOPSIS method. As a result of the sensitivity analysis performed on various parameters of the ELECTRE III method (thresholds of indifference, preference and veto), it was noticed that the rating is especially sensitive to the thresholds of indifference and preference, but not too sensitive to the threshold of veto. In the rankings obtained by both methods, the best and worst country rankings were estimated correctly. According to these results, New Zealand was found to be the country with the best business regulatory environment, while South Sudan, Congo, Libya and Eritrea were the last four countries with the worst business regulatory environment. In addition, when the TOPSIS, ELECTRE III methods were compared with the rankings obtained using the initial parameters, it was determined that both methods ranked 17 countries in the same order.

Keywords: Multi-Criteria Decision Making, ELECTRE III, TOPSIS, Ease of Doing Business Index, Threshold