March 7, 2006

Cheating

By DAVID LEONHARDT

Forensic economists comb through data to look for patterns of cheating that
otherwise go unnoticed. They have uncovered evidence that shipping firms lie
about what goods arrive in China and that executives play accounting games to
hit their bonus targets. Other forensic research has highlighted corruption in
the oil-for-food program during Saddam Hussein’s rule in Iraq.

If you have read "Freakonomoics," you know about some of this work. One
chapter of the book, by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, described a
study finding that sumo wrestlers sometimes lost on purpose, as a favor to an
opponent for whom the match was more important. Another study in the book
suggested that school teachers in Chicago had manipulated students’ answers on
standardized tests to improve their scores.

Below are links to these studies, as well as a few others:

"Missing
Imports" in China (pdf)

Managers
manipulating firm performance

Did Iraq cheat
the United Nations? (pdf)

Corruption
in sumo wrestling (pdf)

Teacher
cheating (pdf)

Late
trading in mutual funds (pdf)

Vote-trading
among figure-skating judges (pdf)

Point
shaving in college basketball (pdf)

Copyright
2006The New York Times Company

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