How attractive is central Eastern Europe for risk capital investors?

This paper addresses the attractiveness of Central Eastern European countries for risk capital investors by the construction of a tailored composite measure. Based on a survey among institutional investors, we define six key drivers that determine an emerging country's attractiveness for this type of investment. Using 42 socio-economic data series as proxies for these six key drivers, we benchmark the Central Eastern European countries with EU-15, Norway, and Switzerland and identify six tier groups of country attractiveness. We highlight socio-economic strengths and weaknesses of Central Eastern Europe and provide guidelines for policy improvements to attract more risk capital funding to spur innovation, entrepreneurship, employment, competitiveness and growth in the emerging region. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.