From www.sciencedirect.com: (US context) Political partisanship significantly influences the Securities and Exchange Commission’s investigations and enforcement actions against financial misconduct, with firms misaligned politically with the SEC facing increased investigation likelihood and harsher penalties if named in an Accounting and Auditing Enforcement Release (AAER).

However, the likelihood of receiving an AAER does not differ based on political alignment.

The findings suggest potential misallocation of enforcement resources driven by partisanship, leading to disproportionate attention on politically misaligned firms despite their similar rates of misconduct compared to aligned firms.