Corruption is a major problem that can inhibit global business investment, especially in emerging markets, but assessing risk is challenging. Moreover, multinational companies often rely on tools for judging business bribery risk that are not well suited to their specific needs. As a result, their compliance practices may not be sufficient, increasing the potential risk of violating various anti-corruption laws, or may be overly aggressive and costly. We have created a new index, the TRACE Matrix, for business bribery risk that we believe has important advantages
over existing alternatives. The TRACE Matrix provides a quick and useful guide to global businesses, drawing on data relevant to business activity that is organized around a conceptual framework of bribery risk factors.

The objective of our research has been to help firms assess the propensity for public-sector bribery and its associated business risk and to provide data to inform compliance processes. We have developed a business bribery risk methodology using existing, publicly available cross-country data about risk factors that uses a clear, transparent methodology to aggregate data from multiple sources. In addition to an overall risk score, the tool provides companies with country-specific information for 14 dimensions of business bribery risk, allowing firms to better customize and target their risk assessment and compliance processes.