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The Smuggling of Art, and the Art of Smuggling: Uncovering the Illicit Trade in Cultural Property and Antiques

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  • Raymond Fisman
  • Shang-Jin Wei

Abstract

We empirically analyze the illicit trade in cultural property and antiques, taking advantage of different reporting incentives between source and destination countries. We thus generate a measure of illicit trafficking in these goods based on the difference between imports recorded in United States' customs data and the (purportedly identical) trade as recorded by customs authorities in exporting countries. We find that this reporting gap is highly correlated with the corruption level of the exporting country as measured by commonly used survey-based indicies, and that this correlation is stronger for artifact-rich countries. As a placebo test, we do not observe any such pattern for U.S. imports of toys from these same exporters. We report similar results for four other Western country markets. Our analysis provides a useful framework for studying trade in illicit goods. Further, our results provide empirical confirmation that survey-based corruption indicies are informative, as they are correlated with an objective measure of illicit activity.

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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 13446.

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Date of creation: Sep 2007
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:13446

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  1. De Sousa, José & Mayer, Thierry & Zignago, Soledad, 2012. "Market Access in Global and Regional Trade," CEPREMAP Working Papers (Docweb) 1201, CEPREMAP.
  2. Raymond Fisman & Edward Miguel, 2007. "Corruption, Norms, and Legal Enforcement: Evidence from Diplomatic Parking Tickets," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 115(6), pages 1020-1048, December.
  3. Prachi Mishra & Arvind Subramanian & Petia Topalova, 2007. "Policies, Enforcement, and Customs Evasion: Evidence from India," IMF Working Papers 07/60, International Monetary Fund.
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Cited by:
  1. Helge Berger & Volker Nitsch, 2008. "Gotcha! A Profile of Smuggling in International Trade," CESifo Working Paper Series 2475, CESifo Group Munich.
  2. Olaf J. de Groot & Matthew D. Rablen & Anja Shortland, 2011. "Gov-aargh-nance: "Even Criminals Need Law and Order"," Economics of Security Working Paper Series 46, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
  3. Robert C. Feenstra & Shang-Jin Wei, 2010. "Introduction to "China's Growing Role in World Trade"," NBER Chapters, in: China's Growing Role in World Trade, pages 1-31 National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  4. Anja Shortland & Sarah Percy, 2012. "Counter-Piracy in Somalia: Help or Hindrance?," CEDI Discussion Paper Series 12-03, Centre for Economic Development and Institutions(CEDI), Brunel University.
  5. Jiro Honda, 2008. "Do IMF Programs Improve Economic Governance?," IMF Working Papers 08/114, International Monetary Fund.
  6. Farzanegan, Mohammad Reza, 2009. "Illegal trade in the Iranian economy: Evidence from a structural model," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 25(4), pages 489-507, December.

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