a. Country name

b. Geographical location and neighboring countries (Localization on map)

c. Population (total number, distribution by gender, age group, etc.)

d. Language(s)

e. Religion

f. Type of government

g. Currency

h. Main trade partners

i. Main industries (economic sectors)

2. Step 2: Business potential economic indicators

j. Per capita income (Gross National Income – GNI)

k. Economic growth rate (Gross Domestic Product growth)

l. Unemployment rate

m. Investment climate (e.g. Ease of Doing Business Rank)

n. Education level

o. Currency

p. Purchasing power parity

q. Economic integration (trading blocks)

Suggested sources of information for steps 1 and 2

· GlobalEDGE™, located at www.globaledge.msu.edu, has many links to information on different countries.

· http://europa.eu/ provides information on the European Union. See especially the link to information on “Economic and Monetary Affairs.” Also click on the link to “Statistics” to access the EU Eurostat pages. Also click on “The EU at a Glance” link, then “Countries,” to get country-specific information.

· www.worldbank.org is the website of the World Bank. It provides economic and commercial information on countries, including the “investment climate” or “climate for doing business.”

· http://www.imf.org/external/data.htm provides data and statistics – such as foreign exchange market – on countries.

Step 3: Cultural profile

Provide an overview of country’s culture structured on the following dimensions:

1) Language

Visit www.ethnologue.com for thorough information regarding your chosen country’s language and language diversity. Ethnologue, is a comprehensive listing of the world’s known languages. It is an excellent resource for linguists, scholars and others with language interests. Visit the website, search for your chosen country and answer the following questions.

a. What is the population of the country?

b. How many oficial languages are spoken in that country?

c. How many native speakers does each language in the country have?

d. In what other countries are those languages spoken?

e. What are the main immigrant languages and how many speakers do they have?

f. How large is the deaf population?

2) Hofstede’s dimensions of national culture

Visit the site directly at www.geert-hofstede.com (specifically http://geert hofstede.com/countries.html). The Hofstede site provides detailed information on management culture around the world. In addition to the raw Hofstede scores for 56 countries, the site provides additional analyses through charts and comparisons.

Describe the chosen country on Hofstede’s cultural dimensions

a. Masculinity vs. feminity

b. individualism vs. collectivism

c. Uncertainty avoidance

d. Power distance

e. Long‐term vs. short term orientation

Suggestion: One approach is to draw a table including all the countries your team focuses on.

3) Additional cultural information: Search the web and provide additional information regarding the culture (for example the one available on the GlobalEDGE™ website).

4. Step 4: Country risk analysis

You should provide information regarding country risk on the following dimensions:

a. Corruption

b. Political rights

c. Civil liberties

d. Freedom status

e. Economic freedom

Suggested sources of information for country risk analysis:

• Transparency International (TI) (www.transparency.org) is an independent organization that fights against corruption. TI publishes the annual Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), which ranks corruption in more than 150 countries. Visit the CPI at TI’s website to obtain the CPI Score. In your analysis, you may find other TI resources useful, such as the Global Corruption Barometer, a survey that assesses public attitudes and experience on corruption in dozens of countries.

• Freedom House (FH) (www.freedomhouse.org) is a non-governmental organization that assesses freedom around the world. In numerous countries, FH assesses conditions regarding the level of government accountability, the rule of law, and freedoms of expression and belief. At its website, FH annually publishes its Freedom in the World Comparative Rankings, an annual comparative assessment of the state of political rights and civil liberties in over 190 countries. The rankings are provided in spreadsheet style, where ‘PR’ stands for ‘Political Rights’ and ‘CL’ stands for ‘Civil Liberties.’ ‘Status’ refers to the countries’ freedom status. ’F,’ ‘PF,’ and ‘NF,’ respectively, stand for ‘Free,’ ‘Partly Free,’ and ‘Not Free.’

• The Heritage Foundation (HF) (www.heritage.org) is a think-tank that annually publishes the Index of Economic Freedom. The index measures levels of economic freedom and government interference in 161 countries. The index uses criteria such as level of trade barriers, rule of law, ability to enforce contracts, level of business regulation, and the degree of protection of intellectual property rights.

• globalEDGE™ (globalEDGE.msu.edu) provides links to additional information on country risk.