International Business - Country Data

Economic and Political Risk

• COFACE
  The country risk ratings are created by Coface, which stands for Compagnie Française d'Assurance pour le Commerce Extérieur (COFACE), which was created in 1946 as the French export credit agency, then privatized by the government, and continues today as a commercial enterprise. It is part of the larger bank group Natixis. While some of its services are fee-based, a good deal is, surprisingly, free including this country rating service. Select Country Risk and Economic Research from the navigation column. You can enter a country, choose to view either a business climate or overall country credit rating, and create a custom comparison chart. (One impressive chart of the entire world can be viewed here. There is also information on whether the rating trend is in a positive or negative direction, recent news, and additional detailed data on doing business in regions around the world.
• DataGob Governance Indicators Database
  DataGob provides a user-friendly interface for accessing most of the publicly available indicators related to governance. It contains approximately 400 governance indicators produced by 25 different sources for a global sample of countries whose coverage depends on the source. These indicators are produced by multilateral organizations, NGOs, private firms, and academic institutions. A sample of indicators include: growth competitiveness, bribey and corruption issues, and business regulatory environment.
• Diplocacy Monitor
  Diplomacy Monitor is a Web crawler that monitors the global output of communiqués, official statements, press briefings, position papers, interview transcripts, and news releases from hundreds of diplomacy-related Web sites. It does so in near real time. You can browse by region, topic, or country, searching diplomatic and trade documents that have been issued over the last 90 days (but you must be sure to hit the "search" button and not just the Enter key to run a search).
• EIU Viewswire
  • Access from: ABI/Inform Complete

    Continuously updated political, economic, and financial risk analysis for 120 countries. In addition to social and economic indicators, includes summary measures of economic, market, and political risk.

    Follow these steps to access this resource:
    1. From the top of the screen, select: Browse.
    
    
    
    
    2. Scroll down to: Country Reports and select:Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) ViewsWire.
    
    
    
    
    3. In the next screen, you will have a choice to search by your country or by topics
    
    
    
• Global Corruption Reports
  Focuses on fighting global corruption. They report on corruption in various sectors including political, health, and access to information.
• Index of Economic Freedom
  Includes country-by-country analyses on 161 countries and data on trade policy, fiscal burden, governmental intervention, monetary policy, foreign investment, banking and finance, wages and prices, property rights, regulation, and black market. Published by the Heritage Foundation (a conservative non-partisan think tank) in cooperation with Dow Jones.
• International Economic Trends
  From the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, this site covers 31 countries.
• Political Risk Yearbook
  There are several ways to find information from this resource.
  • Access from: Business Source Premier
    1. Start by selecting Advanced Search.
    
    
    
    2. In the first search box, type: Political Risk Yearbook.
    3. Change the field label to: TI Title.
    4. In the second search box, type: your country.
    
    Try this method for a broader search:
    1. Start by selecting Advanced Search. (See graphic above)
    2. In the first search box, type: your country AND risk.
    3. Change the field label to: SU Subject.
    
    
    
    4. When the results appear, slide to the left and highlight Country Reports. That will limit your search further for more targeted results.
    
    
    A more direct method for a specific country search:
  • Access from: Business Searching Interface
    1. From the opening screen, under Browse, select:Country Reports.
    
    
    
    
    2. From the Publications screen, select the Country and Type your country in the "Browse for" box.
    3. OR: Scroll down and select: your country



• PRS Group International Country Risk Guide

  IBC's International Country Risk Guide provides in-depth analyses of every factor that could affect business, trade or investments in countries around the world. Each report covers politics, economic policy, extensive analysis of economic trends and an assessment of the country's financial condition. The Guide is useful for multinational business executives, bankers, importers and exporters and fund managers. More than 130 countries get the in-depth coverage every year. In addition, countries are monitored for changing conditions throughout the year.

  • If you need to limit to specific terms and date ranges, you can do so.In addition, you can limit by company name, country, or industry.
• Transparency International

  Transparency International is "the only international non-governmental organisation devoted to combating corruption, brings civil society, business, and governments together in a powerful global coalition." In addition to news and special reports, ongoing surveys on various types of corruption including a global corruption barometer, a bribe payers survey, and a corruption perceptions index.

  Publishes Global Corruption Report which presents chapters on various forms of corruption as well as country reports for approximately 40 countries.
• The World Bank
  From this this site you can find economic and social indicators about countries around the world. A highlight is: Governance Indicators which provides aggregate governance research indicators for almost 209 countries from 1996-2007, for six dimensions of governance: voice and accountability; political stability and absence of violence; government effectiveness; regulatory quality; rule of law; control of corruption.
  • World Competitiveness Yearbook
    Contains national competitiveness profiles for over 40 countries, focusing on the different facets of competitiveness such as assets and processes, aggressiveness, and attractiveness.
    
    

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