International Law

Fraud News You Can Use

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Nassim Taleb has a fond farewell to the statistician David Freedman.  

From Berekely news:

"Throughout his career, Freedman made major contributions to the theory and teaching of statistics.

But he also had a broad impact on the application of statistics to important medical, social, legal and public policy issues, including clinical drug trials, epidemiologic studies, economic models, interpretation of scientific experiments, statistical evidence in the courtroom and adjustments to the census.

"David transformed the practice of applied statistics as it is directed toward litigation, toward Congressional action and toward public policy," said long-time friend and colleague Kenneth Wachter, UC Berkeley professor of demography and statistics.

"The prevailing mode when he began working was to rely on hypothetical models with assumptions sometimes driven by mathematical convenience, which were fine for theoretic work but, when carried over to applications in the policy arena, gave conclusions that were often fanciful or driven by the prejudices or presuppositions of the statisticians testifying or contributing."

From the White Collar Law blog:

"Professor Miriam Baer of Brooklyn Law School has a new piece on SSRN that will be published in the Virginia Law Review. Titled, Linkage and the Deterrence of Corporate Fraud, she says that the Article "focuses on the difficulties of deterring perpetrators of fraud who are in the midst of their crimes, as opposd to potential perpetrators who are merely considering committing such crimes." 

She argues "that when law enforcement policies change (ie, harsher sanctions or promises of more stringent monitoring), mid-fraud perpetrators behave differently from potential perpetrators and, perversely, may perpetrate greater harm in response to traditional increases in sanctions and monitoring resources."  She suggests policy changes.

Here article can be found here.

Full post as published by Misleading Advertising Law on November 03, 2008 (boomark / email).