A recent study by Urska Velikonja, Emory University School of Law; University of Chicago – Law School, analyzes the enforcement statistics the SEC publishes.  The abstract to the study reads as follows:  “Every October, after the end of its fiscal year, the Securities and Exchange Commission releases its annual enforcement report, detailing its activity for the year. The report boasts record enforcement activity, often showing significant increases over the prior fiscal year in the number of enforcement actions brought and monetary penalties ordered. The numbers suggest that the SEC is ever tougher on securities violators. The SEC includes these statistics in its budget requests; the figures are repeated in congressional testimony, scholarship, policy proposals, and the business press.

Yet the SEC’s metrics are deeply flawed. The Article reviews fifteen years of enforcement actions and demonstrates that the widely-circulated statistics are invalid because they do not measure what they purport to measure, and unreliable because they can be manipulated all too easily. The SEC double and triple counts many of its cases and overstates the fines it orders. This Article constructs better measures. These measures reveal that the SEC’s statistics mask the fact that core enforcement has remained steady since 2002, and obscure a shift in enforcement towards easier-to-prosecute strict-liability violations.

The SEC is not alone in using misleading statistics to report its performance. Multiple reporting statutes authorize Congress to cut agencies’ budgets for failing to meet performance targets. In response, agencies report flawed metrics to protect their ability to continue enforcing the law. The Article suggests that Congress should not threaten to reduce an agency’s budget because of year-to-year fluctuations in enforcement. In addition, to make reported numbers more reliable, non-financial performance measures should not be developed by the agency. Instead, the selection and development of performance indicators should be standardized across agencies, much like financial reporting has already been standardized. Doing so would depoliticize reporting, as well as enable comparisons among agencies, both domestically and internationally.”