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Saturday, August 15, 2009

Predicting Fraud

Here's an interesting tidbit from this weekend's New York Times magazine profile of Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, a political scientist who uses game theory to predict political and corporate outcomes.  The Times reports that Bueno de Mesquita offered to use his predictive software for Arthur Andersen 

"to predict which of Arthur Andersen's clients - including, at the time, Enron - were likely to engage in financial fraud.  But the firm's lawyers, Bueno de Mesquita says, didn't want to use the tool for fear it would put them in awkward legal positions."  

No kidding.  The Times then quotes a former Arthur Andersen partner: "'Had I been able to convince the firm' to use the model... I think that Andersen would be alive today."

Posted by Verity Winship on August 15, 2009 at 09:03 AM in Corporate, Current Affairs | Permalink

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The quotation appears on page 4, paragraph 4, of the web version.

Posted by: Verity Winship | Aug 18, 2009 8:08:31 AM

sorry, the exact quote i meant was: "Had I been able to convince the firm' to use the model... I think that Andersen would be alive today."

Posted by: ericb | Aug 17, 2009 1:45:35 PM

Hi, I wasn't able to find the location for that quote. Among other searches, i searched http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=iX6&q=+Times+profile+Bruce+Bueno+de+Mesquita+%22andersen%22&aq=f&oq=&aqi=

I am interested to find where it is located to send it to an accounting colleague.

thanks,

eric

Posted by: ericb | Aug 17, 2009 1:42:30 PM

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