Fernando M. Reimers et a1.

investing in a foreign country specifically in Central America be—
cause it knows that those countries have recently negotiated a free
trade agreement with the United States. The students should ana—
lyze the information related to every Central American country and
recommend a decision about which country should be selected for
the investment venture. The company has just enough capital to
invest in a single country. Finally, some optional ways to analyze
the decision in different circumstances are shown. The scenario is
described in handout 4.
Read the scenario in handout 4 to the class or provide a copy of
handout 4 to each student. Act as the manager of the company, and
ask the students firstly about the possible benefits and costs associ'
ated with an investment in a Central American country. Then ask
the students to list the main criteria or the economic, political, legal,
and technological variables related to each country that will need to
be analyzed before a decision about where to invest can be made. In
order to avoid an overly extensive and complex exercise, you can ask
the students to select just the five or six most important variables.
Students may answer orally in class as a group or individually in a
written in—class or homework assignment.
You may have the students to do extra research on the Central
American countries that have signed the free trade agreement
(Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica)
using the following links:
0 the IMF’s website (httpz/ /www.imf.org/ external/country/ index.
htm)
0 the IADB’s website (http://www.iadb.org)
0 the links page on Auladeeconomia.com (http://www.auladeeco—
nomia.com/link52.htm)
0 the links section on Globalization101.org and also other inter—
national organizations’ websites or media websites
Once the students have selected the variables that they’re going to
review for each country and compiled information on each one, you

can ask them to make a comparison using the following table:

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