When does organized crime resort to assassinating politicians? In narcocracies, criminal groups co-opt political elites through bribery in exchange for protection to traffic illegal drugs. When criminal groups compete, they may also resort to political violence to influence which candidate wins...

We show that the War on Drugs launched by the Mexican President Felipe Calderón in 2007 pushed drug cartels into large-scale oil thefts. Municipalities that the presidential candidate’s party barely won at the local elections in 2007-2009 exhibit a larger increase in illegal oil taps over the...

Between 2003-2017, multiple state and non-state factions fought for control of Baghdad, Iraq. Government-sanctioned armed groups and illegal militias each constructed and appropriated defensive architecture for their own purposes. This article argues that licit and illicit armed groups...

This paper examines how firms in an emerging economy are affected by violence due to drug trafficking. Employing rich longitudinal plant-level data covering all of Mexico from 2005–2010, and using an instrumental variable strategy that exploits plausibly exogenous spatiotemporal variation in...

Organized crime affects security, development, and democracy worldwide, but not much is known about its social consequences. We study how exposure to the presence of organized crime groups shapes the social capital of Italian citizens, including political participation, civic engagement, and...

This paper used publicly available data, such as the analysis of 103 court cases to make a profile of those convicted for cannabis cultivation in Albania. There are multiple reports on drugs and organized crime in Albania which provide information on the seizures of illicit substances, law...

Organized crime reinforces its corrupting influence on politics through violent intimidation. Anti-crime measures that increase the cost of corruption but not of the exercise of violence might accordingly lead mafia-style organizations to retaliate by resorting to violence in lieu of bribery. On...

This paper estimates the impact of the capture of leaders of criminal organizations on the labor market in municipalities where these organizations operated between 2004 and 2006. The difference-in-difference analysis compares different employment outcomes in cartel locations and the rest,...

For decades, illicit economies have predominantly been studied and debated as a security problem with social and development consequences. However, the interaction between illicit economies and the environment, in cases such as illicit drug crop cultivation and drugs production, is more recent...

Transnational counterfeiting conspiracy cases often link the developing and the developed world in illicit ways. In many of these cases, a forged copy of name-brand merchandise is produced cheaply, and transported and shipped to a destination market where it is sold to consumers at a high...

Organised crime tightens its corrupting influence on politics through violent intimidation. Anti-crime measures that increase the cost of corruption but not of the exercise of violence might accordingly lead mafia-style organizations to retaliate by resorting to violence in lieu of bribery. On...

Local governments suspected of Mafia infiltration can be dismissed in Italy through an administrative act not increasing formal deterrence but potentially signaling improved law enforcement among local communities. This paper finds that dismissals are associated to a persistent fall of petty...

We analyze the economic consequences on firm profitability, performance, and investments of having another firm in the same market affiliated with a criminal organization. We do so by evaluating the spillover effects of a law providing the judicial administration of organized crime firms through...

The author, Maurizio Catino, has undertaken a meticulous examination of criminal organizations that dominate the illicit marketplace throughout the world. The Mafia, Cosa Nostra, Camorra, ‘Ndrangheta, Triads, Yakuza, and the South American cartels are dissected and their respective...

UNTOC created a legally binding instrument governing international cooperation between law enforcement and judicial authorities to share evidence and pursue international criminal actors, and a framework for countries to update their legislation to be better able to investigate and prosecute...

We show that the War on Drugs launched by the Mexican President Felipe Calderón in 2007 pushed drug cartels into large-scale oil thefts. Municipalities that the presidential candidate's party barely won at the local elections in 2007-2009 exhibit a larger increase in illegal oil taps over the...

This paper examines how firms in an emerging economy are affected by violence due to drug trafficking. Employing rich longitudinal plant-level data covering all of Mexico from 2005–2010, and using an instrumental variable strategy that exploits plausibly exogenous spatiotemporal variation in...

Organized crime reinforces its corrupting influence on politics through violent intimidation. Anti-crime measures that increase the cost of corruption but not of the exercise of violence might accordingly lead mafia-style organizations to retaliate by resorting to violence in lieu of bribery. On...

This study addresses the political and economic basis of milícias in the city of Rio de Janeiro and the effects of government regulation of legal and illegal markets on their expansion. The period under study was 2007-2020 - of remarkable expansion of milícias - and the information analyzed...

Using a focus on the ways that Covid-19 has impacted everyday life in urban Latin America, this article examines the shifting activities of organized criminal groups in the context of a global pandemic. Using grounded ethnographic fieldwork drawn from Brazil, it asks whether a health crisis with...

White Lists are lists of firms set up at each Italian prefecture. It is a relatively young instrument born as an experimental project designed to solve problems for particular conditions of crime and corruption in the Italian territory. This work aims to understand if the "White List" tool can...

Based on a research in progress, the 'micro-geopolitics of organised crime' (MGPOC) framework examines how and why organised crime groups (OCGs) around the globe develop illicit economies associated to natural resources. The foundational premise underlying the MGPOC is that OCGs vie for...

Mexico has experienced a dramatic increase in violence during the last decade. This increase has been associated with turf wars among Drug Trafficking Organisations (DTOs) for the control of strategic territories. This paper examines whether these territorial disputes are higher during the lame...

How does imperfect law enforcement affect drug trafficking, predation on firms, informality, and aggregate production? To quantify it, a general equilibrium occupational model is developed in which there is room for drug trafficking, crime against businesses, and tax evasion in the presence of...

We show that the War on Drugs launched by the Mexican President Felipe Calderón in 2007 pushed drug cartels into large-scale oil thefts. Municipalities that the presidential candidate’s party barely won at the local elections in 2007-2009 exhibit a larger increase in illegal oil taps over the...

This paper studies the origins and consequences of the Russian mafia (vory-v-zakone). I web scraped a unique dataset that contains detailed biographies of more than 5,000 mafia leaders operating in 15 countries of the (former) Soviet Union at some point between 1916 and 2017. Using this data, I...

We study the investment of organized crime in the legal economy. By using the shock induced on the Italian credit market by the 2007 subprime mortgage crisis, we document how provinces with a high organized crime presence have been impacted less by the crisis in terms of the establishment of new...