The Handbook of Country Risk 2003
The Handbook of Country Risk 2003: A Guide to International Business and Trade
By Coface (a business consulting firm).
Published by Kogan Page Ltd., 2003.
This is a 7" by 10" clothbound book running to 395 pages, plus a preface and an introduction.
The book is intended for businesspeople involved in global trade and foreign investment, to give them quick information on the riskiness of the business climate in different countries.
For each country, we get a map showing its location in its area of the world, a "Coface analysis" number summarizing its short and long term risk, a list of the country's "strengths and weaknesses" from the point of view of an investor or trader, a couple of paragraphs on the risk assessment of that country describing its economic and political issues, a table of economic indicators, summaries of the situation in various economic sectors, and a summary of the "payment and collection practices" there.
This book is an illustrative example of how an information resource can contain lots of objective information at the same time it is highly ideological. The facts and figures in the book are objective and useful, but it is all working from the point of view of global capitalism. Therefore, "slowness in privatization" is always presented as a "weakness," and a strong public sector means that "reforms are still needed."
The ideological bias of the book is problematic from an academic standpoint, but the book is intended for practical uses, and is aimed at an audience that shares its ideology.
Exactly how practical the book is is questionable. It does a good job of summarizing country information relevant to global trade, but if I imagine myself in the shoes of a capitalist considering building a factory in Hungary, as busy as I am doing business things, I think that three pages of information would not be sufficient for my needs. But perhaps there are situations when a global capitalist needs this type of country-by-country breakdown. Our business students might find it useful in their studies about global trade.
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