Ep.165 – Brian Feinstein on White-Collar Favoritism

Brian Feinstein, assistant professor of legal studies and business ethics at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, joins the Business Scholarship Podcast to discuss his article In-Group Favoritism as Legal Strategy: Evidence from FCPA Settlements, which he co-authored with William Heaston and Guilherme Siqueira de Carvalho. In this article, the authors offer empirical findings that corporate targets of Foreign Corrupt Practices Act enforcement tend to hire Democratic attorneys during Democratic administrations and vice versa during Republican administrations. This finding, in turn, raises questions about the potential role of in-group identity and homophily and the integrity of white-collar enforcement. This episode is hosted by Andrew Jennings, assistant professor at Brooklyn Law School, with editing by Steven Rozenfeld, a third-year student at Brooklyn Law School.