Our study analyzes data from the Corporate Prosecution Registry of the University of Virginia School of Law and Duke University School of Law. This registry provides information on federal organizational prosecutions in the United States, including detailed information about every federal organizational prosecution since 2001, as well as deferred and non-prosecution agreements with organizations since 1990. We examine a subset of corporate violators, namely those who allegedly committed five types of fraud, namely, accounting fraud, mail fraud and wire fraud prosecutions, health care fraud, securities fraud, and tax fraud. We utilize the framework of bounded rationality of decision making to hypothesize that prosecutors are influenced by internal and external factors that affect the total penalties ultimately levied on corporate violators. Specifically, our results indicate that corporate penalties are significantly more likely to be lower when U.S. Department of Justice sections are involved in the prosecution and the company's country of incorporation has a Free Trade Agreement with the U.S. but significantly more likely to be higher when the violator is a U.S. public company.

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有限理性对检察决策的影响：企业舞弊违法者处罚分析

我们的研究分析了弗吉尼亚大学法学院和杜克大学法学院公司起诉登记处的数据。该登记处提供有关美国联邦组织起诉的信息，包括自 2001 年以来每次联邦组织起诉的详细信息，以及自 1990 年以来与各组织签订的延期和不起诉协议。我们检查了一部分公司违规者，即那些涉嫌犯有五种类型的欺诈行为，即会计欺诈、邮件欺诈和电汇欺诈起诉、医疗保健欺诈、证券欺诈和税务欺诈。我们利用决策有限理性框架来假设检察官受到内部和外部因素的影响，这些因素影响最终对企业违规者征收的总处罚。具体来说，我们的结果表明，当美国司法部部门参与起诉且公司注册所在国与美国签订自由贸易协定时，公司处罚更有可能较低，但当违规者是一家美国上市公司。