The Rating Systems for Assessing the Business Environment of the Host Country

Abstract

The article is concerned with analyzing the international ratings and indices, developed by leading international institutions and organizations in order to study different aspects of the country’s development. The major rating systems are described, allowing to assess the degree of attractiveness of the business environment of the host country for implementing entrepreneurial activities, with allocation of their components and evaluation parameters. Both the leading countries and Ukraine’s positions in the ratings of indexes of economic freedom, global competitiveness, ease of doing business and involvement of countries in international trade are defined. It is displayed that international rating systems create wide opportunities for analysis of the business environment of the geographically diversified international companies. It is substantiated that the variety of approaches to assessment and the indicators used leads to the difficulty of comparison of the results of use of rating systems and determines the feasibility of further research in the direction of improving the instrumentarium of assessing the favorability of the business environment of the host country. In order to reduce subjectivity and ensure complexity of the result, an approach to calculating the aggregate indicator is proposed, allowing to assess the favorableness of the national environment for international business in accordance with its core components.

Keywords

• rating of economic processes
• index of economic freedom
• global competitiveness index
• ease of doing business index
• index of country involvement in international trade
• aggregate indicator of attractiveness of the country’s business environment