The paper estimates the effect on international capital flows to emerging countries of receiving the investment grade classification from credit-rating agencies, the latter being interpreted as the treatment. The paper uses the propensity score matching to build counterfactuals of emerging economies that received the investment grade rating between 1996 and 2011. The main results show that the investment grade fosters foreign direct investment only in the short run. These results are robust to the definition of control groups and the specification of the propensity score.