Measuring Company Exposure to Country Risk: Theory and Practice

30 Pages Posted: 21 Mar 2006 Last revised: 2 Sep 2008

See all articles by Aswath Damodaran

Aswath Damodaran

New York University - Stern School of Business; New York University (NYU) - Leonard N. Stern School of Business

Date Written: September 1, 2003

Abstract

The growth of financial markets in Asia and Latin America and the allure of globalization have made the analysis and assessment of country risk a critical component of valuation in recent years. In this paper, we consider two issues. The first is the whether country risk should be considered explicitly in valuation, and if the answer is yes, how to do it. Generically, there are two ways of incorporating country risk; we can either adjust the cash flows or change the discount rate and we will consider both approaches. The second and equally important issue is how to assess a company's exposure to country risk and we will emphasize two points. The first is that not all companies in an emerging market are equally exposed to country risk and that we need to differentiate between firms. The second is that a company's exposure to country risk comes not from where it incorporates and trades but from where it does its business. In other words, assessing and dealing with country risk can be important even for companies that trade in developed markets, if they get a significant portion of their revenues in emerging markets.

Keywords: country risk, emerging markets, beta

JEL Classification: G12, G34

Suggested Citation

Damodaran, Aswath, Measuring Company Exposure to Country Risk: Theory and Practice (September 1, 2003). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=889388 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.889388

Aswath Damodaran (Contact Author)

New York University - Stern School of Business ( email )

Stern School of Business
44 West 4th Street
New York, NY 10012-1126
United States
212-998-0340 (Phone)
212-995-4233 (Fax)

HOME PAGE: http://www.damodaran.com

New York University (NYU) - Leonard N. Stern School of Business ( email )

44 West 4th Street
Suite 9-160
New York, NY NY 10012
United States

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
3,255
Abstract Views
11,626
Rank
6,910
PlumX Metrics