As governments compete to attract investment amid economic fragmentation, trust is increasingly treated as a strategic asset. Yet business trust is usually discussed as a matter of perception: whether firms say they trust government and public institutions. This raises a more fundamental question: can we measure whether institutions justify business trust?
For firms, business trust is not merely a matter of reputation or sentiment. It depends on whether institutions provide a predictable, reliable, and fair operating environment. Such conditions shape firms’ confidence to invest, expand, and operate.
This webinar presents ACI’s Institutional Trust Index, a new measure of institutional trustworthiness in the business environment based on the World Bank’s Business Ready dataset covering 101 economies. It also examines Singapore’s performance, variation across ASEAN, and broader cross-country patterns in institutional trustworthiness.