Predicting Federal Contractor Misconduct

ABSTRACT Between 1995 and 2021, the United States’ Federal Government imposed $162.5 billion in penalties upon government contractors who had engaged improper behavior as part of procurement process. Despite enormity contractor misbehavior, characteristics associated with misconduct are relatively underexplored academic literature. In this study, we examine whether to what extent firm predict federal misbehaviors, which range from minor statutory violations fraud. We document a consistent association between (size total amount contracts received), contract-specific (service-type awarding agencies GSA DOE), act committing misconduct. Misconduct severity increases size contracts, is not affected by service has an inverse U-shape for agencies. Taken together, our results suggest that contractor, contract, agency predictably Data Availability: available public sources cited text. JEL Classifications: H11; H57; M41.