Nathan Atkinson is an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School and a research affiliate at the ETH Zürich Center for Law and Economics.
Government regulators may reduce corporate fines for criminal behavior if the fines threaten the firm’s survival, thus posing harms to employees and society. In a recent paper, Nathan Atkinson explores the frequency with which government regulators reduce fines and evaluates if these reductions are justified or if regulators are undermining their own capabilities to deter bad behavior and fully compensate harmed parties.