Editorial Review of
International Country Risk Guide

International Country Risk Guide, ICRG, is a wholly-owned sub of Political Risk Services (see separate entry) but is run essentially independently. ICRG's risk ratings are famous, thanks to the Company's habit of selling them to academics. This resulted in the well-known "Political Risk, Economic Risk and Financial Risk" study that gave false hope to legions of poli sci majors, suggesting that political risk ratings -- notably ICRG's -- could predict emerging market stock returns.

ICRG's ratings are devised by adding up a series of both qualitative and quantitative sub-scores (e.g., budget deficit, corruption, ethnic tensions, each rated on a 1-5 scale) to make overall scores for political risk, economic risk and financial risk. For those who love to crunch numbers, ICRG's monthly updates, long historical data series (back to '80), and numerous sub-components make this odd outfit the service of choice.

http://www.prsgroup.com/icrg/icrg.html