Hi there. Welcome to our visualization of the World Map of Foreign Direct Investment. Since most FDI is confined to relatively small number of countries, we're going to focus just on the top 30 countries involved. Involved both is a source of funds and is the destination for those funds. Whether the data for all the countries is included in the database accompanying this course. Then we divide our analysis into two parts stocks and flows. When we talk about stocks we are looking at the accumulated foreign asset built up over the years. When we talk about flows, we are looking at where an investor places their money in a particular year. The year we are going to be examining. The latest year for which data is available is 2012. If we look at the bar diagram for the stock of outflow investment, we can see the United States still holds an impressive 22% of the worlds FDI assets. Well this has fallen from a peak of 45% in 1986. Even so, it remains far ahead of the United Kingdom, the second placed economy. Hong Kong in fifth place is interesting, it functions as a gateway to China and as late as 1989 it held only 0.5% of the world's FDI. The British Virgin Islands, a nice little tax paradise that appears in 14th place was too small even to register in the statistic before 1988. On the inwards stocks diagram, the United States is also the worlds largest destination for FDI. Although it still has a substantial output balance. It is then followed by Hong Kong whose function as a conduitive funds towards China substantial diminished since 1980s. Looking down the list you'd find countries like India or Indonesia that have largely built up their positions since return of the millenium. Now let's turn and look at which countries are the most active foreign direct investors in 2012. And here we see the United States, still the world's largest player with an investment of almost four times the size of that of China in third place. China's activity as a foreign direct investor dates from around the turn of the millennium. Russia in eighth place began even later, about a decade ago, though other countries such as Cyprus have probably acted as a conduit for Russian funds long before then. Looking at the inward flow of funds, United States still calls an attraction for foreign investors, followed by China and Hong Kong. Brazil and The British Virgins have only come to the attention on investors in the past four or five years, Russia's increased popularity on the other hand date from about a decade ago. So, let's get started. Now you have to remember that the flow data is for one year only, 2013 could significantly change the picture. Certainly for specific countries. The Netherlands, for example, before the recent financial crises, it was always among the largest foreign investors and it actually reduced it foreign asset holdings in 2012 and it could probably bounce back when the data is released. Well, I hope you've enjoyed this overview of foreign direct investments. If a country in which you're interested hasn't appeared, rest assured, you'll be able to find them in the database.