Problems connected with measuring risks of foreign direct investments

Any human activity, including the economic one, is carried out under the conditions of uncertainty, which arises from the complexity of reality. Uncertainty is closely related to risk. The concepts of uncertainty and risk, and thus the relations between them are not defined in the same way. The literature gives different criteria for the classification of the investment risk. With respect to the FDI, a risk can be divided into a general risk, associated with investing, and a special risk, arising from the location of investments outside the country of the investor’s origin. The special risk is usually divided into political (considered crucial) and economic, and both these groups of risks are microeconomic and macroeconomic. A multitude types of investment risks and their globalization make it difficult to identify all their sources and their assessment, which makes the decision about investing not an easy task. Additionally, a number of important determinants of management is difficult to calculate or irrational, which further complicates the decision-making process.