Country rankings, produced by international organizations, have become commonplace in the global community. An intriguing and unexplored question arises: (a) Do governments perceive rankings as feedback on their performance and utilize it to enhance policy-making? Or (b) Are governments excessively influenced by rankings, merely aiming to secure superficially favorable positions? Drawing on the performance feedback theory and institutional theory, two competing hypotheses were proposed to elucidate the impact of performance feedback on managerial decisions. This study leverages a cross-national panel dataset of the Ease of Doing Business reports from the World Bank, encompassing 190 countries from 2007 to 2020. The empirical findings reveal that country rankings reinforce the performance of already high-performing nations while exacerbating the performance of those who fare poorly, suggesting a pronounced polarization effect. These results shed light on how national governments respond to performance rankings and offer valuable insights into the dynamics of international benchmarking.