Measuring the impact of country risks on foreign direct investment A study in selected Arab countries for the period (2000-2014)

The investment environment and foreign direct and indirect is of a great importance in the thoughts and writings of economists and even politicians in order to achieve the desired economic development, more countries has worked to grant encouraging facilities to those investments. The investment in economic development is important because it represents spending on new additions to the production of goods of various kinds. The country risks has become a subject of great concern to the international finance during the past two decades, and the importance of their evaluation by the presence of many of the major ratings agencies for country risk and the most important is the International Country Risk Guide. The rating agencies used different methods to determine the country risk ratings, as It collects a set of qualitative and quantitative information as well as the identification of alternative standards of the economic , financial and political risk. Due to the rapid growth in international lending and foreign direct investment therefore, the country risk analysis has become very important for both international creditors and investors. an‎d the above came the idea of analyzing and measuring the impact of country risk on foreign direct investment in some Arab countries (UAE, Egypt and Libya) with an emphasis on Iraq.