How To Write Country Analysis

A country analysis can focus on the political, social, economic or anthropological aspects of a country. It can also include all these aspects and more within the single country analysis. Comparing and contrasting nations and countries is another way to illustrate the position any nation holds within the global population. Paper Masters wants to show you how to best write a country analysis and what elements are important when producing research that is intended to convey a nation's governmental, economic or social place in the world today.

The following illustrates all the aspects that Paper Masters' believes should be in a good country analysis research paper

Writing a country analysis that covers political, economic, social and cultural aspects of the country includes providing a vast amount of information. Paper Masters shows you where to find the information and how to outline the country analysis in the information you see below.

I. Political/legal aspects:

• Government involvement in business regulation and ownership/planning as well as prices
• Country’s trade policy - This information can be found from Trade freedom index in Heritage Foundation and Trading Across Borders indices on World Bank’s doingbusiness.org)
• Country’s laws regarding ownership:
  1. Are foreign companies allowed to own 100%
  2. Are there restrictions in specific industries for FDI?
  3. Protection of property rights
  4. Enforcement of contracts
• Assessment of citizens’ freedom (civil and political freedom) - This information can be found from ratings for political and civil rights provided by Freedom House’s
• Corruption level

II. Economic aspects

• Structure of the economy (percentage agriculture, service, vs. manufacturing)
• Standard of living (degree of poverty, distribution of income
• Purchasing power per capita income, country’s GDP and the percentage of economic growth (in previous year, and also try to find historical growth – past 3-5 years),
• Inflation (previous year and past 3-5 years)
• Balance of payments – current account (surplus/deficit)
• Foreign exchange system:
  • Type of system (fixed, floating)
  • Restrictions on converting currency?
  • Corporate tax structures (what % do companies pay in taxes?)

III. Socioeconomic and cultural aspects

• Population, growth of population
• Labor force (distribution of labor in different sectors of the economy)
  • Level of unemployment
  • How difficult is it to hire and fire employees as well as change the number of working hours
  • Unions: are they allowed, are they powerful, do they strike a lot, what percentage of the workforce is unionized
• Cultural values
• Ethnicity in population
• Issues with ethnic groups
• Gender issues is any (participation of women in workforce)

IV. Conclusion of Country Analysis

Discuss the pros and cons of the information you found regarding the political, legal, economic and cultural environment of the country you are studying. Given your analysis of the information what level of political and legal risk would a company run if investing in this country? Would you invest? Given your analysis of the information what level of economic risk would a company run if investing in this country? Would you invest? Given the socioeconomic and cultural aspects of the country, do you have any serious concerns regarding investing in the country?