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Emmanuel Olusegun STOBER - Coercive Diplomacy in the Gulf and the Limits of the Strike-Forward Strategy: Toward a Middle-Power Coalition for Regional Stability

Sorin-Nicolae CURCĂ - On the Informational Entropy of Economic Shock

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Alexandru POPOVICI - The Contribution of the Music Industry to GDP and Employment: A Comparative Analysis

Mohammed AL-NASSERY - Implications of the War in the Middle East: An Analysis of the Economic, Security, Humanitarian, and Political Dimensions

Mihai LĂCĂTUŞ - GDP as a Means, Not an End: Inequality as the Missing Variable in Fiscal Policy Design – A 60-Country Analysis of Economic Growth and Subjective Well-Being

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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