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Country Scan

Investment Snapshot

04

The Investment Snapshot provides a high-level analysis of a country's investment experience over time.

 

It is an aggregator of investment data across public and proprietary sources. It subsumes the previously built FDI Snapshot tool and features new sections placing FDI in a broader macroeconomic investment context. The tool was designed with these upgrades for country and macroeconomists. It also included new data on Brownfield (mergers & acquisition) data. Lastly, it features calculated groups for easier benchmarking, such as income-levels and regional groups. It presents benchmarking capabilities as users are prompted to select a target country and then up to five additional countries for comparative analysis. ​

Coverage

  • 197 countries
  • 22 economic sectors
  • 1970-latest year

Methodologies

  • Herfindahl-Hirshcman Index​
  • Growth decompositions
  • FDI Composition
  • FDI Performance

Data Sources

  • UNCTAD 
  • IMF Balance of Payments
  • World Development Indicators​
  • Financial Times
  • IMF World Economic Outlook

The User Experience

The Investment Snapshot helps economists answer two broad questions:​​

  1. What is the role of investment in my country? ​

  2. What is the role of FDI in my country?

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Within the Excel tool, users are initially prompted to make selections in yellow cells:  

  • Years for analysis 

  • Target country

  • Countries for benchmarking analysis

  • Unit (% of GDP, per capita, USD$, # of investments)

  • Type (stock vs. flow)

  • Direction (inward vs. outward FDI) 

 

Once these selections are made, the tool automatically generates charts and data tables within a matter of seconds. The data tables provides users with a shortcut for quickly accessing cleaned investment data​. The charts leverage time-series analysis and benchmarking to tell a compelling story.  

Excel Interface - Sample Outputs

​To build the Investment Snapshot, I took the following the steps: 

​

  1. Downloaded, cleaned, and merged data from the public sources in Stata. 

  2. Calculated relevant indicators per methodologies.

  3. Organized the final dataset in a balanced cross-country panel database.

  4. Exported the database to Excel. 

  5. In Excel, designed graphs, tables, and 'buttons' where formulas work to automatically display user-guided outputs. 

How I Built It

DISCLAIMER:

The tool developed on this page was delivered to the World Bank Group. The tool itself is a property of the World Bank Group. The data utilized for the tool was publicly available data. The methodologies were developed by World Bank Group economists. 

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