What if the richest gave their wealth to start-ups

How many businesses could be created if local entrepreneurs received the fortunes of the wealthiest? We created the 2016 Robin Hood Index to look into the question.

We took the richest individuals of 42 economies with different political regimes and regulatory environment for businesses, and compared their net worth to the procedural start-up cost for small- to medium-sized companies.

The index shows, hypothetically, how many businesses can be started with the net worth of each country’s wealthiest individuals. The numbers were crunched using data from the Bloomberg Billionaires Index and the World Bank Doing Business 2016 report. Start-up costs were expressed in the original Doing Business report as a percentage of the gross national income per capita.

Bill Gates’ net worth would help create 137,296 businesses, at a cost of $605 (Dh2,220) apiece if distributed to local entrepreneurs in the US. That could have huge implications for the labour market. In America, small businesses have contributed the most to job growth, adding 1.4 million new jobs in 2014, according to the US Small Business Administration.

Entrepreneurs from China, the world’s most populous nation, would be able to get the most start-ups up and running than any other country “596,303 to be exact”, thanks to Dalian Wanda Group’s Wang Jianlin, whose own life story is an inspiration to fledgling entrepreneurs. In China, though, corruption and red tape are still obstacles to new businesses.

The costs of starting a business are ranked among the highest in South Korea where the least businesses would be created, 2,971, according to the Index.

The gauge only takes into account the procedural expenses.

There are plenty of other considerations, such as the cost of labour and rent. Other costs are difficult to quantify such as bureaucracy, implicit bribery, enforcing legal contracts, and so on, but are also critical to getting a business off the ground.