international business – In the Know @ the Bentley Library

Export.gov Country Commercial Guides & Market Research Library

January 21, 2016February 4, 2016 Lisa

Export.gov is the U.S. Government’s export promotion and finance portal, bringing together information from a number of agencies to assist small and medium-sized American businesses planning to export or conduct business overseas. This Database of the Month blog post will focus on two research resources accessible via Export.gov – Country Commercial Guides and the Market Research Library.

exportgov

Country Commercial Guides (“Doing Business In…” Guides)

Country Commercial Guides are “doing business in…” guides prepared by trade experts at U.S. embassies worldwide. Country Commercial Guides are designed to be a comprehensive starting point for anyone interested in exporting and doing business overseas. Guides are produced for more than 125 countries, from Afghanistan to Zambia. Each guide focuses on eight important areas:

Market Overview, Challenges, Opportunities, and Entry Strategies
Political and Economic Environment
Selling U.S. Products and Services
Leading Sectors for U.S. Exports and Investment
Trade Regulations, Customs, and Standards
Investment Climate
Trade and Project Financing
Business Travel

Country Commercial Guides are freely accessible at http://www.export.gov/ccg.

Market Research Library

Export.gov’s Market Research Library contains more than 100,000 industry and country-specific market reports, authored by U.S. Commercial Service specialists working in overseas posts. The Market Research Library provides access to Market Research Reports and Best Markets Reports. The Country Commercial Guides, mentioned above, are also included within the Market Research Library.

Full access to the Market Research Library is only available to U.S. students/researchers who register with Export.gov. Registration is free. A registration link is available on the Market Research Library page and at http://www.export.gov/registration/studentform.aspx.

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Database of the Month provides a very brief introduction to a database available from the library’s website, highlighting key features of the database that you should know about. If you would like more information about this database (or any of the library’s databases), please contact the Reference Desk at 781.891.2300 or refdesk@bentley.edu.

Database of the Month: IHS Connect (formerly IHS Global Insight)

July 23, 2014January 21, 2016 Stephen

For a number of years the Bentley University Library has relied upon IHS Global Insight to provide us with comprehensive economic and country risk data. Recently IHS has transitioned the content we received via Global Insight into a new product, IHS Connect. The IHS Country Profiles can now be found under the “geography” tab at the top of each IHS Connect page. User can search for Country Reports based on geographic location for Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe and Oceania. The country reports are comprehensive, updated reports across major factors shaping foreign investment: political, economic, legal, tax, operational and security environment. Country reports has a content area labeled “Research and Data Center” that provides Bentley users with exchange rates and CPI tables, monthly forecast tables, and quarterly forecast tables. The tabular data is downloadable with Excel.

The Growth Outlook content area provides users with a number of tables based on key economic indicators, such as production and inflation, trade and exchange rates. Key indicator tables can be exported to PDF, Excel and PowerPoint. IHS provides 6-8 month projections of key indicators. The Country Rankings content area provides users with the ability to build a rankings table for 206 countries. Countries can be ranked by GDP, CPI, foreign Debt, International Reserves, Long-term Interest Rates, and a number of other categories. Any table in this section of IHS Connect can easily be downloaded to Excel.

A full country report is provided for each country covered by IHS. Each report includes a Country Risk Statement prepared by IHS. Each report also includes a Short-term Outlook section as well as Medium- and Long-term Outlook. The Short-term Outlook provides key points and analysis with recent and projected key macro-economic indicators. The Medium- and Long-term Outlook section provides for a deeper analysis of each country’s economic growth. Growth, labor markets, inflation, exchange rates, monetary and fiscal policy, and the external sector of each country are covered in the narrative of each country report.

Under the “Insight” tab users can find the Risks and Ratings content area. This section provides tables of the IHS Country Risks and sovereign risks. The IHS Country Risks provide weighted risks (Political 25%, Economic 25%, Legal 15%, Tax 15%, Operational 10%, Security 10%) for doing business in all of the countries covered in the database. The sovereign risk content area provides a quick tabular view of medium term risk with ratings from Fitch, Moody’s, and S&P.

IHS Connect is a large, comprehensive database with some content areas that are not available to members of the Bentley community. When logged into the database users will notice that some content areas are “grayed out” or a “lock” icon is used as an indicator that we do not have access to that content.

IHS Connect can be accessed via the Bentley Library’s Databases page (http://library.bentley.edu/research/databasesaz.asp) or directly at http://ezp.bentley.edu/login?url=http://connect.ihs.com.

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Database of the Month provides a very brief introduction to an important research database, highlighting key features of the database that you should know about. If you would like more information about this database (or any of the library’s databases) please Ask a Librarian. If you would like a demonstration of this database for a class, please contact the Reference Desk.

Database of the Month: Doing Business Project from The World Bank

May 21, 2014January 21, 2016 Lisa

The Doing Business Project (DBP) – a free resource provided by The World Bank – is an essential source of information about business regulations and their enforcement for 189 economies and selected cities at the subnational and regional level. Doing Business focuses on regulations affecting domestic small and medium-size companies.

Annual Doing Business reports are available back to 2004 and can be downloaded in PDF format, but researchers may find that the best way to get started is to select an economy from the homepage. This will retrieve the economy’s Ease of Doing Business ranking and business regulation summary information.

Ease of Doing Business

Choose an economy from the Explore Economy Data drop-down box to retrieve Ease of Doing Business ranking information for that economy. Topics considered in the rankings include:

Starting a Business
Dealing with Construction Permits
Getting Electricity
Registering Property
Getting Credit

Protecting Investors
Paying Taxes
Trading Across Borders
Enforcing Contracts
Resolving Insolvency

For example, here is the Ease of Doing Business In Ghana table:

doing-business-ranking-ghana — Click to visit webpage.

Data

Doing Business provides business regulation data from 2003 to the present. Each economy’s snapshot contains detailed information on the topics included in the Ease of Doing Business ranking. For example, here is a detailed view of the “Starting a Business In Ghana” data:

doing-business-starting-a-business-ghana — Click to visit webpage.

Economy Rankings

Doing Business ranks all economies on their ease of doing business, from 1 – 189. Rankings are available for economies, regions, selected cities, income and population.

Law Library

The Doing Business Law Library contains information on business laws and regulations. According to the Doing Business Project, “The Doing Business law library is the largest free online collection of business laws and regulations. We link to official government sources wherever possible. Translations are not official unless indicated otherwise. We update the collection regularly but are unable to guarantee that laws are the most recent version.”

Other Doing Business Project reports and information

Access the Doing Business Project / Get More Information

Researchers can access the Doing Business project online at http://www.doingbusiness.org/, or via the library’s Databases A-Z and International Business Databases pages. More information about the Doing Business Project’s objectives, coverage, methodology and data is available in this About Doing Business Guide.

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Resource of the Month: International Tax and Business Guides

October 18, 2012November 2, 2012 Hope Houston

The library has many databases to help students research global business conditions. You can find many on the library’s Databases by Subject: International Business webpage. There are also several free, and mostly free, online services that are very helpful as well. Deloitte’s International Tax and Business Guides is one such service.

There are two sections in this resource that offer quick overviews of the tax landscape for various countries. The first one is called Taxation and Investment Guides, where you can find comparisons of corporate tax rates, withholding tax, and indirect tax for 65 jurisdictions. For example, here is a side-by-side sample of the corporate tax environment for the United States and India:

United States:
Corporate Tax | Statutory: 35%

India:
Corporate Tax | Statutory: 30-40%

The federal corporate income tax applies to bands of taxable income at rates between 15% and 35%. An additional 5% tax (subject to caps) is imposed on certain bands. A branch tax is imposed on dividend equivalent amounts. An alternative minimum tax is also imposed, calculated on a separate tax base at a rate of 20% (certain credits may reduce tax). The alternative minimum tax is due to the extent a corporation’s tentative minimum tax exceeds its regular tax. The total maximum effective tax rate is 39.5%.

The corporate tax rate for domestic companies is 30%, along with a surcharge of 5% (2% for nonresident companies) where total income exceeds INR 10 million. In addition, a 3% education cess (tax), including indirect and service taxes, is levied. The 3% cess applies to the aggregate amount of income tax, plus the surcharge. Nonresident companies and branches of foreign companies are taxed at a rate of 40%, plus a 2% surcharge where the total income exceeds INR 10 million, and the 3% cess. A Minimum Alternate Tax is imposed at a rate of 18.5% (plus any applicable surcharge and tax) on the adjusted book profits of corporations whose tax liability is less than 18.5% of their book profits (effective rate of 20.01%).

The second section in the International Tax and Business Guides is called the Highlights series, which offers a quick digest of the tax landscape of 150 jurisdictions, including Azerbaijan, Botswana, Brazil, Cayman Islands, the Dominican Republic, and Mauritius, to name only a few. These reports include information about:

Corporate taxation
Business regulations & intellectual property
Foreign trade and investment
Filing requirements of doing business in a country
Personal & business taxation
Labor environment

Combine Deloitte’s International Tax and Business Guides with one of Bentley’s country intelligence databases, such as Global Insight, and you will be able to make informed decisions on doing business around the world.

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Tag: international business