This paper analyzes the rise and demise of piracy off the coast of Somalia to highlight the interplay between public and private crime protection measures. Using unique data on attacks, hijacks, and ransoms, the authors estimate a structural model of Somali piracy to calculate the elasticity of...

In this Chapter, Hannah Tonkin examines in detail the challenges that confront states in supervising and managing private military and security companies (PMSCs) effectively in the field, particularly in weak or conflict-prone states. Effective management of PMSCs is problematic and the stakes...

Does the corporate structure of private security firms (PSFs) influence conflict outcomes? Employers' inclusion of PSFs in conflicts generates a dilemma for government employers as the former are profit-maximizing agents contracted to provide services outside established military structures....

We consider a fundamental dynamic allocation problem motivated by the problem of securities lending in financial markets, the mechanism underlying the short selling of stocks. A lender would like to distribute a finite number of identical copies of some scarce resource to n clients, each of whom...

Armed conflict and occupation are by definition necessarily violent for all participants, be they civilians or combatants. However, for women it heralds an exacerbation in existing violence, discrimination and inequalities. While international humanitarian law (IHL) has dedicated or ‘special'...

This research on public drinking-related conflict and violence has studied the views and experience of security officers and young male drinkers in the Newcastle/Hunter areas of New South Wales, Australia. These participants were recruited non-randomly into different focus groups, and...

This paper analyzes private precautions against crime when the value of the property to be protected is private information. Within a framework in which potential criminals can choose between various crime opportunities, we establish that decentralized decision-making by potential victims may...