Fines for corporate offenders

Although a sizable literature has arisen in the last four decades concerning the optimal punishment of criminal acts, relatively little attention has been directed to the question of whether economic criminals should be punished using fines or prison sentences, except in corporate crime literature. A relevant exception is the law and economics movement of the Chicago School. In this paper I intend to present and discuss some of their results regarding the use of fines in the criminal field. At the same time, the use of fines for businessmen will be discussed, taking into account that since the nineteenth century, the fine was generally considered to be an appropriate punishment to crimes committed out of greed, a fact that has influenced the birth of regulatory law.

Vortrag in englischer Sprache.