(Yicai Global) Nov. 1 -- New Zealand ranked first for the second year in a row in the World Bank's Doing Business 2018: Reforming to Create Jobs report, which assessed the business environment in 190 economies. Mainland China came in 78th, the same place as last year.

The World Bank based its rankings on regulations affecting 10 areas of the life of a business and used "a simple averaging approach for weighting component indicators,

calculating rankings and determining the distance to frontier score," which indicates how conducive a regulatory environment is to opening and running a local enterprise.

Singapore, South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan came in second, fourth, fifth and 15th, respectively.

India was one of "the 10 economies showing the most notable improvement in performance" among those the study covered, moving up 30 spots from last year into 100th place. The World Bank acknowledged the efforts India has made to strengthen the protection of small and medium-sized investors and that country's progress in the digital field.