HBR ：The Rise of Forensic Economics by Raymond Fisman

哈佛商业评论：司法经济学地位日益提升 【瑞蒙.菲斯曼】
【注：个人翻译，转帖请注明及（或）告知】

The Rise of Forensic Economics
by Raymond Fisman

In August 2008 the Swiss police raided a number of offices of Alstom, a French company that had paid bribes to secure infrastructure contracts worldwide. The Alstom scandal – and corruption at companies such as Siemens and Halliburton – were uncovered by vigilant auditors and smart law-enforcement officials. These aren’t the only people unearthing illicit transactions, however. Some economists have recently turned into detectives, pioneering the field of forensic economics.

2008 年八月时，瑞士警方曾突袭阿郎斯通的几家办事处，这家法国公司为了得到全球型的基建合同而行贿。这桩阿郎斯通的丑闻，还有西门子及哈利伯顿公司的贪污案，都是由一些机敏的审查人员和执法官员发现的。然而他们并不仅仅是侦查非法交易的官员。一些经济学家最近变身为侦探，成为司法经济学的先锋。

Forensic economists don’t investigate specific crimes or individual wrongdoing; they analyze the incentives underlying criminal activity and then use conventional tools to look for the footprints that wrongdoers’ actions have left in the data. Which companies were shipping arms to Angola in violation of a UN embargo? Economists looked at stock market reactions to news of a ceasefire in Angola to see which stocks suffered the most: Presumably the embargo violators had the most to lose from an end to the fi ghting. What goods were smuggled into China from Hong Kong in the late 1990s? When I compared records of Hong Kong’s exports with those of China’s imports, I found that high-tariff goods were most likely to “disappear” in transit. Other forensic economists have uncovered evidence of options back - dating, payola in the UN oil-for-food program, and vote trading among figure-skating judges at the Winter Olympics.

司法经济学并非是侦查特定或个体的犯罪行为；他们分析犯罪活动后是受怎么样的利益驱使，然后使用常规工具去寻找那些做错事的人在数据档案中留下的脚印。哪些公司违反了联合国禁运令，向安哥拉运送武器？经济学家们一直观察着证券市场对于安哥拉停火消息的反应，来判断哪些公司的股票受挫最为严重：按照推测那些违反了禁令的公司应当在战争结束时受损失最多。哪些货物在90年代后期从香港走私到了中国大陆？当我比较了香港出口额和中国大陆的进口额的记录后，我发现在运输中那些高价商品最可能“消失”。其他的司法经济学家也发现了期权倒签，联合国油换粮项目的贪污以及贿赂奥林匹克冬运会中花样滑冰裁判的证据。

Forensic economists could have uncovered such problems sooner if they had been able to access data that only governments possess. That’s why we should create a global forensic economics laboratory to coordinate the work of government authorities and researchers, so that together they can better fi ght corruption. Had I been able to work with China’s customs agencies, I could have found smuggling patterns today rather than having to look back at the 1990s. If forensic economists are to detect the sort of bribery Alstom engaged in, they will need better data on cross-border financial flows than are in the public domain. And if governments gave them access, they would have more useful and interesting problems to study, and their results would be more relevant to current policy. They still wouldn’t be able to dig up evidence of crimes by specifi c companies, but the patterns they uncovered would help focus enforcement efforts on the sectors or countries with the most suspicious activity.

如果司法经济学家们可以获得政府级别权限的档案资料，就有可能更早发现这些问题。因此我们应当创建一个司法经济学试验所来协调政府高官和研究人员的工作，从而更有效的打击贪污。如果我能够与中国海关部门进行合作，我应该能发现如今的走私模式而不是回头看90年代。如果司法经济学家要找出阿郎斯通是使用了何种行贿手法，他们会需要更好的跨国财务流数据，而不是整个公共领域。如果政府给予了权限，他们本可能研究更多有益有利的疑难问题，而且结果也会更符合现有政策。他们如今仍然不能挖掘特定企业的犯罪证据，但是他们揭露的犯罪模式能够帮助执法部门将效能聚焦在最有违法嫌疑的活动的国家或行业中。

Collaboration can be a two-way street. Economists could draw on the experience of in-the-trenches bureaucrats and police offi cers to fi nd promising leads. Rather than make do with off-the-shelf data, they could design research programs around governments’ anticorruption efforts, and if governments were willing to experiment with those efforts, economists could follow up with audits to examine their impact. Happily, collaboration between academe and government is well established, as is global cooperation to combat criminal activity: For nearly 100 years Interpol has coordinated efforts to fi ght transnational crime.

合作可以是一把双刃剑。经济学家可以吸收官员和警方的实战经验、找出可能的线索。与其勉强应付现成的数据，他们更能自行设计与政府反贪行动相关的研究项目，如果政府愿意对这些成果进行试验，经济学家们可以补充审核以便考察其影响。令人欣喜的是，学院与政府间的合作已良好建立，打击犯罪活动的国际合作亦如是：国际刑警组织协调和竭力打击国际间犯罪已经将近100年了。

Crunching numbers won’t generate the same excitement that other methods of fighting crime
do; we economists will never appear on the evening news busting down doors with guns blazing. But data could be a critical weapon in the anticorruption arsenal if governments gave forensic economists the opportunity to put them to good use. WEF HBR

咀嚼数字并不能产生与其他打击犯罪的方式相同的兴奋感；我们经济学家永远不会出现在那些破门而入、双方交火的夜间新闻上。但是数据可以是反贪政策中的一项有力武器，只要政府能够给司法经济学家们机会并善用他们。

Raymond Fisman is the Lambert Family Professor of Social Enterprise at Columbia Business School in New York. He is a coauthor, with Edward Miguel, of Economic Gangsters (Princeton, 2008).

瑞蒙.菲斯曼是纽约哥伦比亚商学院的社会企业学朗伯学派教授。他与艾德伍德.米盖尔共同出版了“经济匪徒”一书。【普林斯顿，2008】

原文：http://hbr.harvardbusiness.org/web/2009/hbr-list/rise-of-forensic-economics