Whistleblowers are ostensibly a valuable resource to regulators investigating securities violations, but whether there is a link between whistleblower involvement and the outcomes of enforcement actions is unclear. Using a dataset of employee whistleblowing allegations obtained from the U.S....

Whistleblowers are ostensibly a valuable resource to regulators investigating securities violations, but whether there is a link between whistleblower involvement and the outcomes of enforcement actions is unclear. Using a data set of employee whistleblowing allegations obtained from the U.S....

We exploit the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision of Kokesh v. SEC [2017] as a unique identification strategy to investigate the value of securities law enforcement. The Kokesh decision was an unanticipated legal change that limits the SEC's ability to impose disgorgement—its most potent...

We propose and find that enhanced regulatory transparency facilitates alignment between private and public enforcement. Utilizing the SEC's 2004 decision to publicly disclose its comment letters, we explore the actions of a public enforcer (the SEC) and a private enforcer (shareholder...

This paper studies the deterrent effect of criminal enforcement on white-collar criminal activities. Using the 9/11 terrorist attacks as a shock to the FBI's allocation of investigative resources and priorities, and variations in the Muslim population in the United States as a measure of...

This paper analyzes the impact of changes in regulatory priorities and resource allocation on criminal enforcement of white‐collar criminal activities. Using the 9/11 terrorist attacks as a shock to the FBI's priorities and allocation of investigative resources, as well as variation in the...

Most legal and economics scholars recognize both that the government needs information about taxpayers’ transactions in order to determine whether their reporting is honest, and that third-party reporting helps the government obtain that information. Given governments’ reliance on tax funds,...

Regulators of over-the-counter (OTC) markets face a unique enforcement challenge. OTC markets are particularly susceptible to investor fraud, but prior research indicates regulators prefer to focus their enforcement efforts on larger, exchange-listed firms. We shed light on the SEC’s tailored...

This paper studies the effect of anti-bribery enforcement on the accrual quality of investigated firms and their peers. We analyze a hand-collected sample of 241 bribery cases investigated under the US Foreign Corruption Practices Act (FCPA) over the period 1978-2015. Exploiting the disclosure...

In recent years, reporting under International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) became mandatory in many countries. The capital-market effects around this change have been extensively studied, but their sources are not yet well understood. This study aims to distinguish between several...