[MSN] How to eliminate the black market in stolen antiquities.

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Rent-A-Treasure
How to eliminate the black market in stolen antiquities.
By Tim Harford
Updated Friday, Sept. 14, 2007, at 7:51 PM ET 

A frieze from the Elgin Marbles: http://www.slate.com/id/2173775/

I am writing this column in one of my favorite London haunts-the Great Court
of the British Museum. I've just been to see one of the museum's most famous
and controversial exhibits, the Parthenon Sculptures-also known as the Elgin
Marbles. These carvings were removed from the Acropolis in Athens more than
200 years ago by the Earl of Elgin. But while there's a predictably
long-running argument over where the carvings rightfully belong, the trade
in antiquities is very much alive today. 

This trade is almost inevitable. In a poor country, such as Mali or
Cambodia, foreigners are likely to be willing to pay more for artifacts than
the locals would. The logic of the market would pull the choicest objects
into foreign collections and foreign museums. Many see this as undesirable,
and so most countries maintain some form of ban on trading antiquities. 

But such bans have some unpleasant side effects. They replace the logic of
the market with the logic of the black market, which means that smugglers
would try to conceal the locations of new archaeological sites, to erase or
forge the historical record surrounding objects, and to excavate and ship
objects without the care that could be lavished on an operation that was
legal. Beyond these purely archaeological considerations, illegal objects
are less likely to end up in the top museums and may be relegated to purely
private collections, which is in itself a shame. It's enough to make an
archaeologist weep-and an economist, too.

http://www.slate.com/id/2173775/