Methodology
The Banking on Human Rights project ranks leading banks (including insurance companies and other financial institutions) based on their track record of involvement in human rights abuses. Our Database includes a sample of 178 banks from 27 countries spread over five continents, which are observed from 2000 to 2015. Information about human rights infringements has been retrieved from the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre and cross-checked by other available public sources.
Banks’ List
The project ranks a sample of among the biggest banks and financial institutions from different countries. Banks have been selected based on their size. Selection has relied on Orbis BvD and Forbes Global 2000 list. There is heterogeneity in the extent to which the banks in the list are involved in human rights abuses based on the available evidence. The full list is downloadable from this website and each bank is associated with a BvD identifier in order to facilitate the matching of our dataset with other databases.
Download Methodology
We use an M-quantile regression approach to measure the extent to which the banks in our sample are likely to be involved in human rights abuses. M-quantile regression provides a ‘quantile-like’ generalization of regression. We condition evidence of banks’ human rights abuses by banks’ exposure to the media as this influences the probability of banks to be observed. The index runs from 0 (low level abuses) to 100 (high level abuses).
