Country Rankings
>About this Category
Sites in this category produce a variety of country ratings, on topics from corruption to quality of regulation. These aren't country risk ratings per se -- those sites are filed in "Country Risk Ratings" -- but are often useful resources for country analysis.
AT Kearney's FDI Confidence Index
http://www.atkearney.com/main.taf?p=5,3,1,138
A.T. Kearney's pet think tank, the Global Business Policy Council, every year conducts a survey of global executives on their feelings about risks and opportunities in markets around the world. More than anything, the ranking indicates the latest place where excitable execs are flocking like lemmings -- as you'd guess, China has recently topped the list -- but the study makes interesting reading, including strengths and weaknesses for each market.
KEYWORDS: economic analysis, market attractiveness
AT Kearney's Globalization Index
http://www.atkearney.com/main.taf?p=5,4,1,116
On the success of its FDI Confidence index venture, A.T. Kearney has launched a new index, this one on globalization in conjunction with Foreign Policy magazine. The rankings assess how globalized a country is, including trade, investment, and so on.
KEYWORDS: economic openness, globalization
AT Kearney's Offshore Location Attractiveness Index
http://www.atkearney.com/main.taf?p=5,3,1,75
Yet another A.T. Kearney index, this one -- as the name suggests -- for offshoring. The number one country for finding cheap replacements for uppity workers who don't know their place? You guessed it: India.
AT Kearney's Retail Development Index
http://www.atkearney.com/main.taf?p=5,3,1,139
O.K., "uncle," I said, "uncle!" A.T. Kearney is going to barrage us with country rankings until we surrender. Latest is a retail development index, which rates emerging markets on how attractive they are for retail expansion.
KEYWORDS: market attractiveness
Caux Roundtable
http://www.cauxroundtable.org/countryprofilescountries.htm
The Caux Roundtable, a group of do-goody business types, rates countries on their compliance with standards of regulation, globalization, and political rights, among other things. It's just a summary of rankings available elsewhere, but it's nice to have assembled in one place.
Country Indicators for Foreign Policy
Tired of playing second fiddle, Canada raises the bar with this site, which is more user-friendly than the CIA's State Failure project (see separate entry) and includes occasional country assessments as a bonus. The base aim is similar: uncover the factors that correlate with violent political conflict, with a view to early warning and prevention.
The CIA did a massive data search and analysis, with results you can read in a quite well-written report. The CIFP, a joint academic-government project, takes an alternative approach, telling us what we need to look out for -- a history of conflict, environmental stresses, ethnic divisions, militarization, etc. -- and offering this data to the public. A well-done interface spits out the base statistics, and irregular risk reports provide country risk ratings as well as dry, detailed country risk assessments including scenarios. Reports on hot topics such as corporate social responsibility also appear on the site.
David Carment writes -- please ask people to reference our work when they use our research, methodology and data.
KEYWORDS: ethnicity, environment, environment statistics, democratization, political violence statistics, political stability, military statistics, country scenarios
Failed States Index
http://www.fundforpeace.org/programs/fsi/fsindex.php
A joint project of the Fund for Peace and Foreign Policy Magazine, this index is a ranking of the worst of the worst for political instability. War-torn Ivory Coast is, not surprisingly, the world's top disaster story. Iraq is ranked fourth from the bottom. Data on sub-indices (Mounting Demographic Pressures, Criminalization of the State, Chronic and Sustained Human Flight) are also available. The methodology is a little strange, based on combing newspapers and magazines for certain keywords. The Foreign Policy Magazine article introducing the index is available here.
Fraser Institute Index of Economic Freedom
The Fraser Institute's economic freedom index is yet another right-wing ploy, but peddled with the wide-eyed earnestness so typical of Canadians ("Free the World!" is the project's slogan). Actually, the Fraser index is in some ways more sophisticated than that offered by Freedom House, based on better sources (including country risk outfit ICRG, see our review in the "Reviews" section). The website isn't as nice, though. Hopping to country pages only gets you overall scores, not sub-scores and a writeup. However, all the sub-data, stretching back to 1975, is available as an Excel spreadsheet if desired.
KEYWORDS: economic openness, regulatory quality, economic stability
Freedom House Ratings
http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=15&year=2005
Freedom House has long been known for its respected ratings of political rights, civil liberties, and more recently, press freedom. The country pages provide detailed background information (including ethnic and religious groups) and explanations of the ratings.
KEYWORDS: ethnicity, religion, democratization, rule of law
Global Production Location Indicators
http://www.global-production.com/
Depressed by all these measures of risk? Us too. So let's look to the upside, and visit Globalproduction.com, with its indicators of country potential as locations for sourcing and production. The indicators are useful, including labor costs, skill base, R&D capacity, sector specialties -- but only for a short list of about thirty countries.
KEYWORDS: production location attractiveness, market attractiveness
Heritage Foundation Index of Economic Freedom
http://www.heritage.org/research/features/index
Right-wing think-tank The Heritage Foundation publishes a relatively sober and useful assessment of economic policy in its annual Index of Economic Freedom. The book costs money, but if you click "Countries" you can browse the country ratings free of charge. The methodology isn't that sophisticated -- e.g., assigning "Regulatory Quality" ratings based on commentary in the State Deparment Commercial Guides. And to the fire-breathing conservatives at Heritage, the more free-market it is, the better, no matter what. Still, the indicators of economic policy quality are useful, and the price is right.
KEYWORDS: economic openness, regulatory quality, taxation, economic stability, economic liberalization
ILO Economic Security Index
http://www.ilo.org/public/english/protection/ses/info/publ/economic_security.htm
The International Labor Organization, the crazed socialist arm of the United Nations, has a new Economic Security Index. The report ranks countries on seven measures of work-related security. Turns out Sweden is a socialist paradise -- who knew? -- and in the United States, ranked twenty-five, much of the workforce lives in a state of constant terror. Surveying 48,000 workers in 90 countries, the report concludes: "The most important determinant of national happiness is not income level – there is a positive association but rising income seems to have little effect as wealthy countries grow wealthier. The most important factor is the extent of income security, measured in terms of income protection and a low degree of income inequality." Oddly, given the ILO's socialist ideology, the actual index isn't free -- you have to buy the book.
IMD's World Competitiveness Yearbook
http://www02.imd.ch/wcc/ranking/
IMD's pretty stingy with its ratings -- they want you to buy the book -- but if you're just looking for an overall indicator, follow the link to a chart. The IMD's competitiveness index is made of four components, at least two or three of which relate to country risk: Economic Performance, Government Efficiency, Business Efficiency, and Infrastructure. The WEF produces a similar index and is (slightly) less stingy.
KEYWORDS: economic competitiveness
MSU Market Potential Ratings
http://globaledge.msu.edu/ibrd/marketpot.asp
Is Michigan State better than Michigan? Well, MSU does have these cool ratings of market potential, combining quantitative measures of risk and reward, though only for 24 emerging market economies. MSU's site also has country profiles, though it's mostly data lifted from the CIA.
KEYWORDS: market attractiveness
PWC's Opacity Index
http://www.kurtzmangroup.com/opacity_index.htm
Don't be fooled by imitators! Both www.opacity-index.com and PWC's own web site contain only the original 2001 index. For 2004, you need the Kurtzman link above.
Loosely, the index measures the degree to which a country's regulatory environment fosters the development of capital markets, which, as two University of Chicago profs argued in a recent, superb book, is surprisingly crucial for a country's economic development.
KEYWORDS: economic openness, regulatory quality
Polity IV Country Reports
http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/inscr/polity/report.htm
Polity IV is essentially an attempt to rate the world's regimes on their level of democracy. It's a fascinating and sophisticated exercise, though done at a leisurely academic pace, so a bit out of date. The graphs contain historical data on democratization and armed conflicts; the charts and text describe the political system. The strick, intelligent methodology makes this a useful analytical tool -- an alternative to the more populist Freedom in the World index. Go here for definitions of the various oddly-named "sub-indices" (XRREG, XRCOMP, etc.).
KEYWORDS: democratization, political violence statistics
State Failure Project
http://globalpolicy.gmu.edu/pitf/
Originally a research project on political instability funded by the CIA, now a public-private-academic partnership that's taken on a life of its own. There is, unfortunately, no state failure ranking. There are, however, research reports make fascinating reading, listing variables that explain historical state failures with 80-plus percent accuracy. Also includes downloadable data on state failures, quite useful for those designing their own political risk models that will change the world. Good luck with that.
KEYWORDS: political violence statistics, political stability
Transparency International
From humble beginnings TI has grown to be one of the world's most respected NGO's. TI's most well-known offering is the Global Corruption Report, which rates countries around the world on their level of corruption, based on survey data. Another fun rating is the "bribe-payer index," which rates countries on their likelihood of offering bribes. And guess which rich country tops the bribe-paying list? The U.S., of course. And you thought it was just Halliburton.
KEYWORDS: corruption
WEF Global Competitiveness Report
The WEF's annual competitiveness rankings have aged like fine wine. The once-humble set of sub-rankings and components is now a great resource for country risk analysis -- especially for evaluating the business environment. Unfortunately, for a club of rich guys, the WEF is ultra-stingy, apparently preferring to up their caviar budget for the annual Davos soirre rather than give back to the people. Still, the website does display the overall index.
KEYWORDS: economic competitiveness, risk for creditors, regulatory quality, economic openness, economic stability
World Bank "Doing Business" Ratings
http://rru.worldbank.org/DoingBusiness/
The World Bank, on its mission to drown the globe in useful data, offers a rigorous, quantitative indicator of the quality of business regulation in countries around the world. Broken down into categories: starting a business, labor, contracts, credit, and bankruptcy. There's a few basic stats, too, including size of the informal economy -- hard to find elsewhere.
KEYWORDS: labor, informal economy statistics, legal system, regulatory quality
World Bank Governance Indicators
http://info.worldbank.org/governance/kkz2004/
The World Bank provides a superb set of country ratings, the likes of which one won't find (for free) elsewhere. These include policy measures such as voice and accountability and government effectiveness, as well as political stability (!!), regulatory quality, control of corruption, and rule of law. The truly stingy will note that many of these indicators are built from risk ratings by leading country analysis firms, including WMR and ICRG (see reviews in the "Reviews" section). So save a buck or two.
KEYWORDS: political stability, democratization, rule of law, corruption, regulatory quality, risk for investors
World Business Environment Survey
http://info.worldbank.org/governance/wbes
A recent, profound shift in development economics in recent years has been the realization that institutions matter. In other words, even if economic policy is great and politics stable, if there are no property rights and contract enforcement in a country, there's no way anyone can do business. Seems obvious, but without data to back it up, a lot of people didn't believe it.
Then the World Bank decided to conduct an extraordinary survey, of eighty countries, and find statistical evidence. You can browse the survey results here. It's out of date (conducted in early 2000), and the interface is hard to use, but the detail is unmatched (sample question: "If a government official acts against the rules, can you get it fixed without resorting to bribes?").
For more easily accessed and up-to-date data on the subject, see the World Bank "Doing Business" ratings and the Global Competitiveness Report.
KEYWORDS: regulatory quality