Law Commons^™

Corporate Crime And Punishment: An Empirical Study, Dorothy S. Lund, Natasha Sarin

Faculty Scholarship

For many years, law and economics scholars, as well as politicians and regulators, have debated whether corporate punishment chills beneficial corporate activity or, in the alternative, lets corporate criminals off too easily. A crucial and yet understudied aspect of this debate is empirical evidence. Unlike most other types of crime, the government does not measure corporate crime rates; therefore, the government and researchers alike cannot easily determine whether disputed policies are effectively deterring future incidents of corporate misconduct. In this Article, we take important first steps in addressing these questions. Specifically, we use three novel sources as proxies for corporate …