Devin Case-Ruchala - Public Banks Dataset

A Global Historical Dataset of Government Initiated Public Banks

Public banks have existed for centuries, yet relatively little is known about when and why governments decide to create them. To address this gap, I developed a global dataset of government-initiated public banks (G-Pubs) as described in my article in Review of International Political Economy. The dataset offers a new way to study public banks by systematically tracking their creation across time and place. It includes more than 1,300 public banks across 195 countries, spanning the period 1401 to 2021. Each bank in the dataset is defined as one that was formed or taken over by a government, where the government retained control for at least 5 years through ownership or management.

This approach differs from prior studies and datasets that define public banks primarily by government ownership levels. By focusing on the act of government formation and control, the dataset sheds light on public banks as policy decisions—not just institutional outcomes (government ownership).

The dataset can be downloaded here. Key findings and data collection methodology are summarized below.

Key descriptive findings:

Descriptive summaries of public bank formation using this dataset show that:

Public banks are neither novel policy concepts (as some post-2008 financial crisis discourse may suggest), nor relics of historical eras prior to global financialization. Rather, governments have continuously created them throughout the 20th century and well into the 21st century, including during periods of financial liberalization.
Contrary to common assumptions, public banks have more often emerged in developed democracies, not just in authoritarian or less-developed countries.
These institutions have served a range of purposes over time—from managing financial crises to supporting strategic investments in infrastructure and new industries.

Together, the data challenge the idea that public banks are outdated or exceptional. Instead, they appear as a recurring feature of how governments engage with financial markets—an “old, novel” idea that persists through changing political and economic eras.

The figure below portrays the formation and closure of all public banks in the dataset over time and by region. The plot depicts shading between public bank start and end years; darker shading indicates a greater number of banks active at one time. Broadly, it shows the global emergence of public banks as corresponding to state and financial market formation beginning in 15th century Europe, diffusing along with state and market expansion to other regions up through the neoliberal era.

Data collection sources & methodology:

Given the lack of prior data or systematic research on public bank formation, my data collection process entailed a snowball-sampling style strategy followed by multiple rounds of verification. I first compiled an initial list of banks using two main existing databases that allow a search of banks according to the percent of government ownership—Orbis Bank Focus (“Orbis”) and Securities Data Corporation Mergers & Acquisitions (“SDC M&A”). I filtered on government ownership levels of greater than 20% of assets, examining each case to confirm that the year of formation captures when government ownership went into effect. Using this initial list, I updated or filled in missing information for key fields and added new fields entirely, including: Year of formation, Method of formation (nationalization, de novo, etc.), Year of closure, Method of closure , Bank type and subtypes (see supplementary information for details), National/sub-national government formation, and Brief historical background.

I then supplemented this initial list of banks from Orbis and SDC M&A using historical and qualitative sources, filling out the same fields of information. For the pre-1800 period, I drew from Roberds and Velde (2014), which describes government-initiated bank formation going back to the fifteenth century. I also reviewed and incorporated the list of development banks published in 2019 by Finance in Common (FIC; Xu et al. 2019). The remaining banks identified through qualitative research were added iteratively; when researching a bank’s history (e.g., its year of formation), I often identified additional banks absent from the dataset, which were then added and researched in the same way until no further gaps were apparent. In countries with small banking systems, this made verification relatively straightforward. Sources used throughout this process included: bank websites, IMF or World Bank documents and reports, academic or news articles, online book chapters, domestic laws and regulations, and Wikipedia pages (when well-cited), among others.

The table below summarizes the number of public banks in the dataset identified through each source, including the range of bank formation dates and closure dates of the banks collected from each source.