Revista OEconomica

Raluca-Georgiana ROBU, Maria GHEORGHE (NIŢU), Valentin COJANU, Alexia-Maria POPESCU - Between Opportunity and Dependency: The Evolution of Romania’s Trade with Asian Economies [Între oportunitate şi dependenţă: evoluţia comerţului României cu economiile asiatice]

Narciz BĂLĂŞOIU, Octavian-Dragomir JORA, Răzvan Marian PÎRCĂLĂBESCU - Romania’s Positioning and Room for Manoeuvre: The Dilemmas of Peripheral Adaptation in the New Indo-Pacific [Poziţionarea şi marjele de manevră ale României: dilemele adaptării periferice în noul Indo-Pacific]

Mădălina JURUBIțĂ - Redefining EU Trade Policy for an Age of Geoeconomic Rivalry: Strategic Autonomy, Security, and Resilience

Geicun MUSTAFA - Islamophobia as an Informal Trade Barrier: Reputational Risk and the Political Economy of Deglobalization

Hesam JEBELI-BAKHT-ARA - Racialized Capitalism and Economic Discrimination: The Case of Ethnic Labour Segmentation in Contemporary Europe

Articles on Issue Theme

Radu CHIOTAN

Academia de Studii Economice din Bucureşti

This article develops a transparent protocol for selecting and reporting geopolitical and political risk proxies in MENA-focused (Middle East and North Africa) foreign direct investment research. Risk measures are classified by conceptual coverage, temporal resolution, and data-generating process, with attention to measurement error, comparability, and interpretability trade-offs. A concise empirical illustration shows that estimated coefficients and significance levels can shift substantially across commonly used proxies, underscoring the need for standardized robustness reporting. A checklist and decision tree are presented to link research questions – such as short-run shocks versus persistent instability or domestic versus external risk – to proxy choice and recommended diagnostics. The paper aims to reduce arbitrariness in risk measurement and improve cross-study comparability in a region characterized by frequent security and diplomatic shocks.

ŒCONOMICA no. 2/2025

Keywords: foreign direct investment, Middle East and North Africa, geopolitical risk, political risk, risk measurement, proxy selection, robustness

JEL: C18, C52, D81, F21, F23

Measuring Risk for FDI Research in MENA: A Transparent Protocol for Proxy Selection and Robustness

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