Manipulating the discount rate when valuing international investment projects

Abstract

The article deals with the practice of evaluation of international investment projects using the cash flow discounting rate. The problem of the discount rate manipulating is connected with the category “country risk”, which often determines the impact on the rate and, accordingly, the investment decisions. Critically examines existing approaches to the definition of “country risk”. Categories that make up a complete picture of “country risk” are distinguished. The general defect of existing country risk concepts is revealed – the fact that the measurements are based on rather subjective assessments and do not have sufficient empirical evidence, the fact that almost all of them have a clear liberal democratic bias: as a rule, drawing attention to the relationship between the political system and stability, the liberal democratic structure of society is recognized as the most stable, without any acceptable scientific evidence, followed by autocracy, military dictatorships and new independent states. The author affirms the lack of a clear and unambiguous definition of this category, the controversial approach to ranking of countries. The author analyzes and proves the bias of rating assigned by foreign companies. As a conclusion the need to create a national research concept of the “country risk” category is аffirms with the subsequent promotion of national rating agencies to the world market. The author's conception of the category “country risk” is proposed, an author's definition is given to this notion, it is recommended to establish the primacy of national ratings over foreign ones both in domestic and international relations in order to have independent influence on international capital flows. It is also proposed the evaluation of projects based on the dynamic discounting rates, especially for long-term strategic projects.