The Economics of Organised Crime

This book uses economic theory to analyze the different aspects of organized crime. The theory of rent-seeking is adopted to help understand the origin of criminal organizations, while modern industrial organization theory is used to explain the design of internal rules. The market behavior of organized crime is analyzed, the "crime and economics" approach being applied to the analysis of corruption that occurs when the organized crime sector and the government collude to exploit their monopoly on rule-making. Each chapter outlines the normative results of the analysis in order to design more sophisticated deterrence policies.