No subject

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.

http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/business/hancock/blog/2007/10/using_document
s_to_trace_smugg.html