Organised Crime and Technology

Mustafa Caglayan (), Alessandro Flamini () and Babak Jahanshahi ()
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Babak Jahanshahi: University of Edinburgh

SPRU Working Paper Series from SPRU - Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex Business School

Abstract: We show that mafias harm technological development. We provide evidence that forced resettlement of bosses promoted mafias rooting in northern Italy. With forced resettlement as exogenous source of variation, we unveil that mafias cause a reduction in technology levels. Moving to a technology generating flow -innovation- we demonstrate that mafias stifle innovation. We argue that without mafia, Nature selects agents for their innovation capacity. Instead, with mafia, agents face an alternative strategy: relate with mafia; this strategy, infringing property rights and competition, hinders innovation. Using evolutionary dynamics, we show that while mafias decrease innovation, proper sanctions/indemnities can address the problem.

Keywords: Organised crime; evolutionary game theory; innovation; technology (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C73 K14 K42 O17 O30 R11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-gth, nep-law and nep-ore
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Organised Crime and Technology (2018)
Working Paper: Organized Crime and Technology (2017)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sru:ssewps:2019-22

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