Methodology for historical country risk data
A reveiw of 13 years of country risk ratings, region by region.
ALL INDIVIDUALS WORKING in global finance are in essence risk managers. You try to calculate the risks and weigh up the rewards. And surely over the past decade or more, as investment has flowed freely around the globe and information has become more readily available, the risks of investing have declined?
Well, no, if Euromoney's long-term monitoring of country risk is taken as the measure. We have analysed Euromoney's semi-annual country risk rankings, based on our evaluation of political and economic risk, from the introduction of the current methodology in 1993 to the present day. The results might surprise many readers. With the exception of central and eastern Europe, the country risk rankings show a general decline in scores over the past 12 years.
Euromoney calculated the percentage change in country risk ranking score of every nation involved in the survey since 1993. To show the progression over that period, we also produce analysis of the changes in score over three time periods: 1993 to 1995, 1996 to 2000 and 2001 to 2005.
On these figures, the Middle East, Africa and Asia are the least stable regions, with vastly shifting percentage changes – the majority in a negative direction. This contrasts strongly with the stability in western Europe. Scandinavian countries, particularly Sweden (ranked 5 in the September Country risk 2005 table), Norway (3) and Finland (7), have experienced the largest increases for this region. It should be noted that western Europe started our polling period from a low base, as it was just starting to emerge from the collapse of centralized government in the early 1990s when the current ranking system was introduced.
| Western Europe & North America | |||||
| Rank | Country | % change between '93 - '05 | % change between '93 - '95 | % change between '95 - '00 | % change between '00 - '05 |
| 1 | Sweden | 11.5% | -0.1% | 6.3% | 5.0% |
| 2 | Norway | 10.5% | 1.1% | -1.3% | 10.7% |
| 3 | Finland | 9.7% | 7.7% | -1.7% | 3.6% |
| 4 | Iceland | 8.6% | -0.5% | 0.3% | 8.8% |
| 5 | Luxembourg | 6.5% | 5.4% | 0.0% | 1.1% |
| Middle East | |||||
| Rank | Country | % change between '93 - '05 | % change between '93 - '95 | % change between '95 - '00 | % change between '00 - '05 |
| 1 | Qatar | -15.93% | -7.63% | -19.12% | 12.54% |
| 2 | Kuwait | -16.97% | -9.35% | -4.42% | -4.18% |
| 3 | Jordan | -19.01% | -0.89% | -14.22% | -4.74% |
| 4 | United Arab Emirates | -20.71% | -13.52% | -7.82% | -0.52% |
| 5 | Israel | -28.24% | -10.46% | -7.91% | -12.99% |
Subscribers can access the full feature: How the world got more risky: Historical country risk ratings
Find daily news reports on the countries ranked in the bi-annual index within our region pages. You will find these listed under 'Emerging markets'.