6. The stock market
6.1 Macroeconomic measures
The dependent variable is the change in stock market value in dollar terms (as measured by the International Finance Corporation’s Investable Index) from the end of 1996 to the lowest point of 1998 and to the end of 1998. A comparison in dollars is appealing because this is how most international investors and the IFC evaluate stock market performance. Obviously, the dollar value of markets is heavily influenced by exchange rate movements. However, the correlation is not one-to-one. Table 3 shows the values of this index.