在线审计实验方法的发展及应用

Methodological Development and Applications of Online Audit/Correspondence Experiments

审计实验作为重要的随机控制实验(RCT)方法,在研究各类歧视以及委托—代理问题上发挥了重要作用,长期以来受到学术界和政策制定者的广泛关注。近年来,依托互联网技术所开展的在线审计实验大量涌现。与传统审计实验相比,在线审计实验作为审计实验方法的前沿发展方向,其在增加研究样本、提高实验可控制性、降低实验成本、提高估计精度等方面具有明显优势。本文在回顾传统审计实验方法的基础上,介绍在线审计实验方法的发展和应用研究,进而总结当前在线审计实验研究的局限,并对如何改进该方法以及可扩展的应用研究方向提出见解和针对性建议。

As an important type of randomized controlled trial,audit/correspondence(AC)ex-periments have played a crucial role in studying various types of discrimination and principal-a-gent problems,and have received long-lasting and wide attention from academia and policymak-ers.In recent years,there have been increasing online AC experiments based on Internet tech-nologies.As a cutting-edge development direction of AC experimental method,it has obvious ad-vantages over traditional AC experiments in terms of enlarging research samples,improving ex-perimental control,reducing experimental costs,and enhancing estimation accuracy.Based on a survey of traditional AC experimental methods,we first introduce recent methodological develop-ment and research applications of online AC experiments and summarize their limitations,and then provide insights and suggestions on the direction of further methodological improvements and future applications.