Politics and Corporate Crime Legislation

Abstract:     
The recent spate of alleged corporate fraud has led to calls for new corporate crime legislation. Interestingly, there are already many such laws; before the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002, some 300,000 federal corporate criminal offenses were already on the books. How did so much corporate crime legislation get enacted, given the lobbying strength of corporate interests? We would expect that wealthy, organized corporations would largely be able to get their way in the legislative process, yet they appear to be losing the battle over corporate crime legislation. How can we explain that outcome?

Number of Pages in PDF File: 6

Keywords: Sarbanes-Oxley, corporate crime, corporations, corporate crime legislation, corporate liability, third-party liability, corporate misconduct, compliance, third-party enforcement

JEL Classification: K1, K13, K14, K22, K42

Accepted Paper Series