If we want to narrow the North-South divide that threatens our world, some limits on tax competition are inevitable. The world faces a crucial choice in the 2020s. We can either continue retreating from globalization in favor of xenophobic nationalism, tariffs, immigration restrictions, and...

I investigate the effect of ratification of different human rights treaties adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on Official Development Assistance (ODA) by donors of the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC). On average the ratification of an additional human rights treaty...

In recent years, greater attention has been given to developing metrics that measure more than a country’s gross domestic product (GDP). Similarly, greater consideration has been given to more than just the financial performance of commercial enterprises; corporations are now expected to...

This paper analyzes empirically whether the ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), advocating the multiple dimensions of women's rights, affects the level of women's rights in a country. Measuring commitments to the CEDAW based on...

Socially Responsible Investment - in particular Environmental Social Governance issues (ESG) including human rights - is becoming a crucial issue. Although not a new concept, the integration of ESG and human rights factors into investment decisions remains a challenge. Given recent corporate...

Almost a billion people do not have access to clean and safe water. Access to safe drinking water and sanitation is increasingly being considered a fundamental human right. Corporations play an important role in the realization of the right to water. For example, they can become violators of the...

This paper explores the lessons to be learned from the South African debt crisis of the mid-1980s and suggests ways in which it could have been used to promote human rights changes in apartheid South Africa

This paper explores the type of human rights obligations of the World Bank and the IMF. It argues that their human rights obligations can be divided into two sets of issues. First is operational issues, which relate to both the promotion and protection of human rights. Second is institutional...

The Equator Principles experiment in forging a trinity of corporate responsibilities – financial, social and environmental – is now ten years old. By a number of measures, it has been a success. From an initial cohort of ten financial institutions, membership of the Equator Principles has...