Q&A: The U.S. Department of Justice scrapped independent forensics panel, but the scientific questions ‘are not going away’

Science ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kelly Servick
Keyword(s):  
Department Of Justice ◽  
Scientific Questions ◽  
The U.S

U.S. Political Corruption and Audit Fees

2020 ◽  
pp. 0000-0000 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anand Jha ◽  
Manoj Kulchania ◽  
Jared Smith
Keyword(s):  
Fixed Effects ◽  
Political Corruption ◽  
Audit Fees ◽  
Internal Controls ◽  
Capital City ◽  
Department Of Justice ◽  
Additional Risk ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The U.S

Using data on corruption convictions from the U.S. Department of Justice, we find that auditors charge higher fees when a firm is headquartered in a more corrupt district. This result is robust to a wide range of time and location fixed effects, using capital city isolation as an instrument, and propensity score matching. We also find that, relative to those in non-corrupt districts, firms in corrupt districts are more likely to have weak internal controls and to restate earnings and that their auditors exert greater effort. This evidence suggests that auditing firms in corrupt areas entails additional risk, which auditors price into fees.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Christina L. Boyd ◽  
Michael J. Nelson ◽  
Ian Ostrander ◽  
Ethan D. Boldt
Keyword(s):  
Local Community ◽  
Attorney General ◽  
Political Influence ◽  
Executive Branch ◽  
Department Of Justice ◽  
High Ranking ◽  
Political Environments ◽  
The U.S

Scholars, politicians, and prosecutors themselves have repeatedly maintained that federal prosecutors have vast independence when carrying out their jobs. Despite this, we argue that federal prosecutors are constrained by the federal and local political environments in which they serve. U.S. Attorneys, the chief federal prosecutors for the 93 federal judicial districts around the country, are selected through a politically driven appointment process and operate within the purview of the Department of Justice, an executive branch agency. Federal prosecutors are led by the U.S. Attorney General, a presidential appointee and high-ranking member of the president’s cabinet. And U.S. Attorneys are invested members of their local community and are likely to be mindful of those preferences when making prosecutorial decisions. As a result, we should expect to find political influence at every stage of a U.S. Attorney’s service. The chapter closes with a preview of the full book.

Chuck Newcomb

2017 ◽  
Vol 111 ◽  
pp. 339-342
Author(s):  
Chuck Newcomb
Keyword(s):  
International Institutions ◽  
Department Of Justice ◽  
Success Stories ◽  
The U.S

Hi. My name is Chuck Newcomb from the U.S. Department of Justice. You spoke about the crisis of confidence for a lot of the international institutions and tribunals. What are some of the success stories? What are some of the examples that we can hold up to speak with our colleagues to talk about the good that you are doing or the examples that we can hold up for other or future institutions to follow from?

Pain Management and the U.S. Department of Justice

2010 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 214-219
Author(s):  
Kimberley Garrison ◽  
Ethel Mitty
Keyword(s):  
Pain Management ◽  
Department Of Justice ◽  
The U.S

The Insurance Hypothesis: An Examination of KPMG's Audit Clients around the Investigation and Settlement of the Tax Shelter Case

2013 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Darryl L. Brown ◽  
Susan Z. Shu ◽  
Billy S. Soo ◽  
Gregory M. Trompeter
Keyword(s):  
Financial Distress ◽  
Abnormal Returns ◽  
Natural Setting ◽  
Litigation Risk ◽  
Department Of Justice ◽  
News Reports ◽  
Insurance Hypothesis ◽  
Insurance Effect ◽  
Prior Literature ◽  
The U.S

SUMMARY Although prior literature has suggested that independent audits provide an implicit form of insurance against investor losses (the “insurance hypothesis”), it has been challenging to isolate the “insurance” effect. In this paper, we use a unique setting to examine this effect. In 2002, KPMG was investigated by the U.S. Department of Justice in relation to tax shelters sold by the firm. From then until early 2005, several news reports suggested that KPMG would be indicted and suffer potentially the same fate as Arthur Andersen. However, in August of 2005 KPMG entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice, which ended widespread speculation of an impending federal indictment against the accounting firm. Because the investigation centered around tax services offered by the firm, we argue that the circumstances surrounding the investigation and settlement provide a natural setting to test the insurance value provided by auditors. We show that KPMG audit client firms experienced significant negative abnormal market returns when it appeared more likely that KPMG would face criminal charges, but earned significantly positive abnormal returns following news reports of an impending settlement. Further, these abnormal returns appear to be driven by KPMG client firms in greater financial distress or subject to greater litigation risk. These findings are consistent with the insurance hypothesis. Although we cannot completely eliminate other explanations such as an assurance effect or switching costs, we argue that such explanations are unlikely to drive our main findings.

scholarly journals Judicial Response to the 2010 Horizontal Merger Guidelines

2021 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-79
Author(s):  
Carl Shapiro ◽  
Howard Shelanski
Keyword(s):  
Federal Trade Commission ◽  
Case Law ◽  
Market Concentration ◽  
Horizontal Merger ◽  
Average Increase ◽  
Department Of Justice ◽  
Merger Guidelines ◽  
Direct Competition ◽  
The Government ◽  
The U.S

AbstractWe study how the courts have responded to the 2010 Horizontal Merger Guidelines issued by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission. Looking at decided cases, we find that both the government and merging parties rely on the 2010 Guidelines in presenting their cases, each side respectively arguing that it should win if the court properly follows them . The 2010 Guidelines had the strongest effect on the case law in the area of unilateral effects, where a number of courts have embraced them in ways that clearly depart from earlier decisions. The case law now exhibits much greater receptivity to a government showing that the merger will lead to higher prices simply due to the loss of direct competition between the two merging firms. The courts also have followed the 2010 Guidelines by more willingly defining markets around targeted customers. We do not detect any effect on decided cases of the higher concentration thresholds found in the 2010 Guidelines. Both the average pre-merger level of market concentration and the average increase in market concentration alleged by the government in litigated cases to date declined after 2010 .

A Model Curriculum for Education in Fraud and Forensic Accounting

2008 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 505-519 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary-Jo Kranacher ◽  
Bonnie W. Morris ◽  
Timothy A. Pearson ◽  
Richard A. Riley
Keyword(s):  
Field Testing ◽  
Evaluation Agency ◽  
Subject Matter Experts ◽  
Department Of Justice ◽  
Model Curriculum ◽  
Forensic Accounting ◽  
National Institute Of Justice ◽  
Accounting Courses ◽  
Curriculum Guidelines ◽  
The U.S

ABSTRACT: The following paper describes the promise and reality of creating fraud and forensic accounting courses and curriculum. The project was supported by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), the research, development, and evaluation agency of the U.S. Department of Justice. The Model Curriculum guidelines were developed in three main phases: (1) constituting a planning panel to guide the project and selecting the members of a technical working group of subject matter experts, (2) developing the curriculum guidelines, and (3) field-testing those guidelines. This paper provides background and motivation for the project, an overview of the project processes, and the educational guidelines (outcomes) that were developed by experts in the field.

Letter to the U.S.S.C. Chair from Lanny Breuer and Jonathan Wroblewski (Sept. 2011)

2011 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-144
Keyword(s):  
Web Site ◽  
Court Decisions ◽  
Department Of Justice ◽  
Categorical Approach ◽  
Federal Sentencing ◽  
Child Exploitation ◽  
Mandatory Minimum Sentencing ◽  
The U.S

This 8-page letter to the U.S. Sentencing Commission Chair from the U.S. Department of Justice Criminal Division is reprinted from the U.S. Department of Justice Web site at http://www.justice.gov/. The letter notes the challenges facing federal sentencing and corrections policy and, in a section on congressional directives, reports on mandatory minimum sentencing statutes and outlines guideline amendments to address congressional directives. The letter also outlines other guideline issues—including the categorical approach to reviewing predicate offenses and child exploitation crimes—as well as circuit splits and erroneous court decisions.

Bringing Light to the DOJ’s Cartel Fine Methodology with the Auto Parts Plea Agreements

2018 ◽  
Vol 63 (4) ◽  
pp. 379-398
Author(s):  
Michelle Burtis ◽  
Daniel K. Oakes ◽  
Mary Beth Savio
Keyword(s):  
Antitrust Policy ◽  
Department Of Justice ◽  
Auto Parts ◽  
The Government ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Sentencing Outcomes

It has been acknowledged by both practitioners and the government that transparency in the calculation of criminal antitrust fines by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is important for the continued success of criminal antitrust policy. Recent auto parts investigations provide a large and diverse set of plea agreement observations that are compared to gain a better understanding of DOJ’s criminal fining policy for corporations and to assess whether the sentencing outcomes are consistent, both across the investigations and with DOJ’s stated policies. The analysis shows that with regard to certain inputs into the fine calculations, the DOJ provided additional transparency in the auto parts plea agreements, although in other areas the methods used to determine inputs remain opaque.

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