Return to Wellesley College's Law &
Economics Home Page. In his book entitled Organized Crime, Howard Abadinsky defines organized crime as being "nonideological, hierarchical, limited or exclusive in membership, perpetuitous, organized through specialization or division of labour, monopolistic and governed by rules and regulations."1 Comparing these attributes with those of a theoretical monopoly, it is possible to see how similar the organizations are. However, perhaps a more appropriate comparison could be made to an oligopoly, a derivation of a pure monopoly. The economic analysis does not change so much as do the motives behind the business decisions made by both the legitimate and illegitimate firms. One of the main differences between legal and illegal monopolies is that while a legal monopoly might take its profits and reinvest them either back into the firm, or use them to pay dividends to their shareholders, an illegal monopoly will hide its profits by branching out into legal business activities related to the illegal ones.2 This in turn makes its harder for law enforcement to crack down on the illegal enterprises. Illegal monopolies do not pay taxes, as legal ones do, the repercussion being a skewed tax incentive structure which "punishes" honesty by increasing taxes on private households and corporations. This tax increase manifests itself as a decrease in leisure time and consumer spending. It is a vicious cycle that once set into motion is very hard to bring to halt.
Part of the problem has been the term "organized crime," which has come to mean different things to different people. This has been mostly due to the secretive nature of a crime syndicate, the consequence being a lack of concrete data available for scholars and organizations to work with. The resulting confusion has led to a muddled policy and criminal law approach which has not diminished the influence of organized crime, but perhaps has even helped it to flourish. Constructing an economic model of a theoretical organized crime syndicate and illustrating how similar its business operations are to that of a firm in a legal industry will shed some light on factors that have kept the cycle in motion; perhaps that light will make its way down part of the public policy tunnel and help illuminate some of the inefficiencies in criminal legislation which have enabled organized crime families to expand and thrive in our society.
"Even if not established as a social problem, organized crime can be studied from the perspective of organizational theory. In this kind of study, social scientists [including economists] will have to borrow methodological techniques from archaeologists and geologists, who manufacture data by reasoning that knowledge about inaccessible affairs can be obtained from considering affairs that are accessible to study. This kind of process can be used to create, from the study of the structure of organized crime, information about criminals' norms and interaction processes."3
In this quote from his ground breaking and widely cited article "The Study of Organized Crime as a Social Problem," written in 1967, Donald Cressey states that this is the only technique that will enable scholars to make the most of the little concrete information available. Most social scientists have taken precisely this approach - creating theories about organized crime by using first hand and anecdotal information that has been garnered from members of crime syndicates that have been arrested and who have turned witnesses for the state. The problem with this strategy is a lack of concrete empirical data that fully illustrates the extent to which organized crime has integrated itself into the norms of American society. It has also resulted in generating sensationalist myths that have glorified organized crime and have made it seem a glamourous and exciting way of life. Cressey acknowledges this by admitting that the evidence obtainable to social scientists has probably already "... been screened by the perceptions of both informants and observers."4 He goes on to elaborate on the organizational nature of crime families, with particular reference to the position of "the Enforcer," the assassin. The hitman is "... one of a subset of positions existing within a broader division of labour designed to maximize organizational integration by means of just infliction of punishment on wrongdoers."5 Cressey's emphasis on this position may be due to fact that the assassin is perhaps the easiest for law enforcement officials to track down and arrest because he is the one involved in the most blatant disregard of the law, the taking of a human life. The reasoning behind the Enforcer's assignment might be complex, but the action itself is simple and relatively easy to prove when compared to the intricacy of the crimes the other members of crime families are involved in. "... [T]he presence of the Enforcer position signals the fact that it has been designed to minimize the degree of conflict and to maximize the degree of conformity among members."6 Cressey feels the fact that the presence of the specific position of the Enforcer proves the hierarchical nature of organized crime families.
Cressey's theory of division of labour in organized crime is mentioned with great frequency in the literature of the field. Whether scholars agree with it or not, his hypothesis has been very influential. Much of the academic literature on organized crime in fact spends a fair portion of time dwelling on the lack of concrete data as well as suggesting how other academics can approach the problem in future studies. This includes work by Peter Block, Peter Lupsha and Dwight Smith. Although they all examine organized crime from different angles, the conclusions are remarkably similar, namely that law enforcement has confronted the problem inefficiently because it has tackled the individuals of the crime syndicate rather than the entity. They believe that law enforcement has put too much emphasis on the "crime" aspect and not enough on the "organized" aspect, the consequences of this fundamental analytical failure being an increase in illegal activity rather than a decrease. Rather than examining the economic forces of household demand for illegal goods and services, which drives crime syndicates to supply them, law enforcement has instead concentrated ineffectually on the individual purveyors.
In contrast, for their article "Fact, fancy, and organized crime,"7 Reuter and Rubinstein did their own empirical research on the structure and operation of the gambling rackets in the greater metropolitan of New York City from 1965-1978. They studied the financial records of the gambling operations which had been raided by the police department.
"We have been able to obtain numerous official records on gambling operations and investigations, some wiretap transcripts and ... information drawn from lengthy interviews with police gambling specialists and informants active in bookmaking and numbers. Enforcement agencies certainly have more access to all of these sources, but we are certain that no agency has ever analyzed the gambling rackets by the systematic use of such data."8
They draw some very interesting conclusions about the costs of illegal gambling to society. One observations is that although only a small percentage of police resources went towards fighting illegal gambling, the desire to control organized crime was so great that it led to an increase in the powers of police and prosecution which under other circumstances would have been considered an infringement on the right to privacy and should have been deemed unacceptable.9 The practices they criticize include needless governmental intervention such as increased regulation of businesses and a rise in the wiretapping of private domiciles. These procedures are the repercussion of misinformation and analytic failures on the part of law enforcement officials and legislators. To illustrate one of the more obvious analytic failures, they draw an analogy between "... the inducement that [heroine] provides for thieves," as the law justifies its policies towards the illegal narcotic and outlawing marriage since marriage is the principal motive for murder. "These are the function of supplying the service rather than of the existence of stable gangs."10 In other words, if a reduction in violence associated with organized crime is the goal of law enforcement, targeting gambling operators who use violence against customers (criminals who would be several steps removed from the actual source of power according to Cressey's organizational theory) would be a better tactic rather than pursuing the Mafia which was the practice at the time of their article.
Federal law defines organized crime as "... those unlawful activities in which a highly organized, disciplined association supplies illegal goods and services." It even acknowledges that organized crime thrives precisely because "... it provides services the public demands..." and that its livelihood "... depends not on victims, but on customers."11 This explanation illustrates how the law, while acknowledging the power of the market behind the power of organized crime, nevertheless has not implemented this concept in its crime fighting policy.
The most complete and least subjective definition of organized crime is the one provided by Reuter and Rubinstein and will be referred to for the remainder of this paper.
"Organized crime is viewed as a set of stable, hierarchically organized gangs which, through violence or its credible threat, have acquired monopoly control of certain major illegal markets. This control has produced enormous profits, which have been used to bribe public officials, thus further protecting the monopolies. These funds have also been invested in acquiring legitimate businesses in which the racketeers continue to use extortion and threats to minimize competition."12
This definition not only encompasses an implicit economic analysis, but also alludes to public policy issues which are raised by the inclusion of corruption of police and legislators. In addition, it makes no mention of either the ethnicity of members of crime syndicates or the familial ties which many assume are prevalent in crime "families." While Italian Americans may be among the more prominent and "news worthy" individuals involved with organized crime, they are certainly not the only ones involved. As Dwight Smith points out, "... the historical association with the Italian dominated crime syndicate... was not so much an essential attribute of the enterprise being developed..."13
"... [O]rganized crime is a product of America. It is not Italian, Sicilian, Jewish, German, Polish or Russian. Its leaders were American born or socialized, and the context of the American economic and political system effected them." 14
Elaborating on Reuter and Rubinstein's definition, Mark Haller concurs with the idea of organized crime as being a set of hierarchically organized gangs. This can be expanded upon further by equating the gangs to separate firms in collusion with each other. He views joining a crime syndicate as being similar to joining a college alumni association or the Chamber of Commerce. It is a way for businessmen to network and make contacts that might help them in their future business endeavors, legal or not. Those who are beginners look for more experienced mentors who might pass opportunities on to them while more mature businessmen come to find reliable potential partners and to exchange vital information which can help them in future business decisions.15 From an economic viewpoint, being a part of this exclusive society minimizes search costs (for partners and possible business deals) and maximizes expected benefits from future market transactions for both the established criminals and for the budding entrepreneur who wishes to be involved in an organized crime syndicate. For the inexperienced, blood and ethnic ties, although beneficial, are no longer requirements.
In his essay "What is the Business of Organized Crime?" Thomas Schelling maintains that organized crime "... does not just extend itself broadly, but brooks no competition. It seeks not only influence, but exclusive influence. In the overworld its counterpart would not just be organized business, but monopoly."16 Before proceeding with a comparison of an organized crime syndicate with a theoretical oligopoly, it is first necessary to provide an economical model of a monopoly as well as looking at possible economic derivations of oligopolies such as cartels and the dominant firm theory of pricing.
A pure monopoly is an imperfectly competitive market for a homogeneous good that has one producer and many buyers, so the assumption can be made that the firm has some power over the price it chooses to charge for its product. High barriers to entry make it nearly impossible for other firms to enter the market in an effort to capture some of the abundant profits. To maximize profits, a monopoly will set its output so that marginal revenue is equal to marginal cost. If the monopolist produces at a level that is lower than this, he may be able to charge more, but this is not a profit maximizing strategy because at this point, marginal revenue will exceed marginal cost. A firm producing at this level will continue to generate profits, but not as much of one as it could if it set its output level to where marginal revenue equals marginal cost. Regardless, the pure monopolist is able to price the good at price he chooses because he is the only producer of the good on the market. There is no worry of competitors lowering prices and capturing the market because there are no competitors.17 Even if there are several firms in a monopolistic market structure, each firm still has a substantial amount of monopoly power. The same analysis for determining output level for a pure monopoly applies for these firms; they will produce until marginal revenue equals marginal cost. Their demand curve is still the market demand for the good in question, the only difference being that these firms have to take demand elasticities into account. If four firms are producing a homogeneous good and Firm A tries to take advantage of its monopoly power by raising the price of its product above where marginal costs equal marginal revenue, depending on the market demand elasticity of its product, it can lose its market share to the other firms because consumers will switch to the products.18
Although using a monopoly as a point of comparison makes sense on the surface, a more valid comparison would be an organized crime syndicate to an oligopolistic market. According to Pindyck and Rubinfeld, an oligopolistic market structure is different from a pure monopoly in that in an oligopoly, there is more than one firm involved in the total production of a good, but not many. Firms with monopoly power produce homogeneous goods whereas oligopolies may or may not produce differentiated products. And just like monopolies, firms involved in oligopolistic markets earn significant profits because there are substantial barriers to entry which prevent other firms from entering the market to take advantage of the large profits it is possible to obtain.19 Barriers to entry include large economies of scale to enable efficient production of the product in order for the firm to pay its fixed costs, or legal barriers such as patents and copyrights. In reference to organized crime, using the example of cocaine, a barrier to entry could be ownership of a scarce resource, such as having access to regions with climates suitable to growing the coca leaves on the large scale that is needed to derive cocaine powder from. Other barriers to entries could include the massive network needed to safely transport the drug from the place of its origination to its final destination, the buyer, and the large start up costs which encompass everything from bribing the Coast Guard to buying the plastic bags which the narcotic is sold in.
The main difference between oligopolies and monopolies however, is how they achieve equilibrium. Theoretically, monopolies make their business decisions in isolation, simply taking their own profit maximization into account. Oligopolies, on the other hand, actively engage in strategic behaviour, taking into account how their actions will affect their rivals and how those rivals will retaliate.
"When making decisions, each firm must weigh its competitors' reactions, knowing that those competitors will also weigh its reactions to their decisions. Furthermore, decisions, reactions, reactions to reactions, and so forth are dynamic, evolving over time... Managers of a firm assume... their competitors are as rational and intelligent as they are."20
For competitive and monopolistic markets, when firms are in equilibrium when they are doing the best they can and have no incentive to change their price or output. This principle changes when applied to oligopolies. It is called Nash equilibrium and states that each firm in an oligopolistic market structure will make the best profit maximization decisions it can given what its competitors are doing. The resulting profit is higher than it would be under perfect competition, but lower than it could be if the firms colluded.21 For organized crime families, doing the best given what other crime families are doing is generally not good enough.
Following Cressey's theory of organization of crime families, it is conceivable to draw comparisons between oligopolies and crime syndicates. Both involve extensive division of labour, a strict hierarchy of power and some sort of adjudication process to settle disputes internally. However, this can be said to characterize most firms. It is the rationale behind decision making that draws parallels between oligopolies and crime syndicates, rather than monopolies. Oligopolies actively engage in strategic behaviour to protect their monopoly profits by preventing other firms from entering the market. Crime syndicates do the same, but via illegal and sometimes violent channels. For example, one family can actively prevent another one from entering its illegal market by either enlisting the services of its Enforcer or by coercion, threatening potential partners and distributors with various forms of harm, monetary as well as bodily.
Just as Haller refers to organized crime syndicates as clubs for businessmen who happen to be involved in illegal markets, this analysis can be taken one step further so that a crime "family" can be viewed as a cartel, similar to OPEC, in that a subset of producers explicitly agree to cooperate in setting prices and output levels.22 In a legal industry such as oil, a cartel has the potential of driving market prices up far past competitive levels, if the members all cooperate.
Using the Dominant Firm theory to determine cartel pricing, if Firms A and B join together to form one heroine syndicate, this new narcotics firm can be large enough to capture the larger market firm. If this happens, the new cartel can look at the market demand for heroine while taking into account the future output level of the smaller fringe narcotics dealers at the new price. It can then set the price accordingly to maximize its own profits.23
This theory can be used to explain why frequently smaller providers of illegal goods and services band together. For example, a subset of modest cocaine distributors might join together to form a larger coalition that could accomplish several things. First, collusion would help them cut costs, improve their markets and pool their capital resources together. It would facilitate their gain of monopoly power in their particular field of illicit products. Pooling their resources can centralize the procedures needed to bribe law enforcement officials and legislators as well as expedite the accumulation of wealth they hope to achieve.24 These are all very deliberate, premeditated decisions that have a correlation to the theory of oligopolistic market structures. Those higher up on the organized crime ladder realize that
"... 'organized crime' is not against the law... Except when conspiracy statues are violated, it is not against the law for an individual or a group of individuals rationally to plan, establish, and develop a division of labour for the perpetration of a crime, whether it be bookmaking or murder. Neither is it against the law for an individual to participate in such a division of labour."25
Therefore one can say that "the boss" makes a strategic decision to maximize his utility and profits by engaging in the planning stage of a crime, then hiring someone to execute the actual act for him. The expected utility he expects to receive from enlisting someone greatly exceed the expected costs of labour and possible apprehension. The expected costs are further minimized if the businessman belongs to a crime syndicate, which if thought of as an illegal Rotary Club, enables him to choose from a pool of reliable labour, thus decreasing the search costs involved in looking for a loyal employee. This is assuming that the requirements to belong to a crime syndicate are sufficiently stringent so that only the most loyal and trustworthy are allowed to join.
As mentioned previously, comparisons drawing economic parallels between monopolistic firm structures and crime syndicates is the most prevalent in the literature of the field. On the other hand, Annelise Graebner Anderson takes a different approach in her book
. She contends that "[t]he organization of these illegal enterprises is not one-to-one with the group's governing structure... members of the group have formed several firms, often partnerships, that operate in illegal markets."26 From this explanation, one could draw the conclusion that a single crime syndicate operates like a multiproduct firm in the illegal service industry. (The theoretical definition of an oligopoly does not exclude multiproduct firms.) It operates as a legal firm might under an oligopoly, always taking the potential reactions of not only crime syndicates, but also the reactions of its own firm, into account when making overall decisions. Within that multiproduct firm, the divisions are regulated by the same set of overall rules, but each division engages in independent business decisions. This arrangement can be very economically efficient. It allows the divisions to allocate the fixed costs of the "infrastructure" (legal counsel, on-the-job training for new recruits, bribery funds) equally among themselves while permitting each firm to specialize within their particular field. Specialization is especially important because it gives the divisions an opportunity to maximize their marginal utility from human capital separately while at the same time removing the leaders of the entire syndicate from the actual criminal process.
For example, Family A can be involved in both cocaine and heroine production and distribution because economies of scale make it feasible and more profitable for the family to diversify their assets. A cartel can be formed when the firm responsible for heroine production in Thailand within Family A learns that Family C is expanding their own heroine division; therefore, to protect and augment its own profits, Family A can actively seek out a partnership with the firm within Family B that is likewise in charge of heroine, but whose production center is in Vietnam. Because Family A has a division devoted solely to heroine, the assumption can be made that their employees are experts in the field through specialization and would therefore know which firm in other families would be the best fit for the partnership. If the resulting partnership encompasses a large market share, it would allow Firms A and B, most importantly, to set price and output levels to maximize their joint profits. It would also present the opportunity to minimize their joint costs by increasing their distributional economies of scale as well as minimizing risk of betrayal if the partnership leads to a downsizing in the two firms. If Family B is a member of a nationwide crime syndicate, then it is simply a consolidation of two divisions; if Family B is a member of another crime syndicate, Family A made the Machiavellian strategic decision that the ends justify the means - a partnership with Family B, while perhaps personally distasteful, is more economically efficient than an outright war with Family C. "Where there is no governmental authority that can exert itself, or where a government is sympathetic or subservient to business, broad cartel arrangements may provide a framework for comparatively nonviolent resolution of competitive conflict."27 "... [O]rganized illegal market activity generates a need for legitimate business ownership and affects the economic benefits to be gained from particular types of legitimate business investment."28 Sometimes organized crime families venture into legitimate businesses as a way of hiding their large illegal profits i.e. money laundering. Other times, the legal business might have a direct link to the illegal business. For example, the reason Family A might want to enter into a partnership agreement with Family B to collude in the heroine industry is because Family B might own a car rental business. As well as being a place in which invest illegal profits, this car rental business would be an unassuming way to minimize risk of seizure by having people who legally rent cars to drive to other states unknowingly distribute the narcotic.
The costs imposed on society by organized crime are not as clear cut as the costs imposed by other criminal acts. Some of the micro economic costs associated with "unorganized" crime include physical injury which incorporates lost market and leisure time plus medical costs. There is also damage to property and the costs of crime prevention. "Moral costs," such as the externality of the "outrage" that is provoked by the crime and the fear induced by the threat of crime, need to be included in the social welfare function.29 These all incorporate the concept of opportunity costs, meaning that the money society is spending on crime fighting could be money spent on low income housing, hospitals and consumer expenditures. However, it is difficult to assign these costs to organized crime because (with the exception of extortion and loansharking) it is the private consumers who seek out the criminals, not the criminals who seek out victims. The criminal law response to these "costs" has been a very traditional view that the greater the criminal intent involved, the greater the individual's "blameworthiness," which therefore makes the criminal more deserving of punishment.30 Economic analysis of this stance has shown that the intangible concept of "blameworthiness" is frequently positively related to the elasticity of response to the severity of punishment. This is how policy makers have approached the apprehension of organized crime members. Notwithstanding the severity of punishment, this stance has not worked well as a deterrent. Frequently, the criminals who are apprehended are not given harsh sentences because they are caught for petty crimes (assassinations being the exception.) The expected benefits from illicit industry monopoly profits are much greater than the expected costs of apprehension and punishment, if only because members of crime syndicates believe they will be well taken care of after having served their time. A better deterrent would be to somehow take the monopoly profits out of the illegal goods and services provided by organized crime.
The social costs of organized crime cartels are much more evident on a macro economic level, one of the most serious being tax evasion. Because these cartels operate in an underground economy, their revenue goes unreported and therefore untaxed. The amount of revenue collected from legal businesses set up by illegal enterprises is minor in comparison to the tax income foregone. Governmental responses can include an increase in taxation rates on "the honest," to decrease its own expenditures or to increase national debt.31 Increasing the tax rates of the households and corporations which do pay taxes results in a decrease in income available for consumer expenditures, less funds for capital investment, an increase in the placement of funds into tax free investments and a decrease in leisure time as households have to work more hours to make up the lost revenue. Not enough leisure time manifests itself as a decrease in productivity in the workplace as well as worker dissatisfaction. This in turn can cause firms generate less revenue from which they can pay taxes on. On a governmental level, the loss of taxes leads to a decrease in social expenditures such as public education, infrastructure and environmental conservation.
In 1967, the Task Force on Organized Crime reported that "[t]he core of organized crime activity is the supplying of illegal goods and services-gambling, loansharking, narcotics, and other forms of vice-to countless numbers of citizen customers."32 Instead of looking at the perpetrators of the crimes, public policy could instead examine what it is about particular industries that lend themselves to monopolistic market structures? Which factors in the drug trafficking and prostitution industries make them more conducive to monopolies than the home burglary business? It is the same aspects that make some legal industries natural contenders to function as monopolies - economies of scale, high start up and fixed costs, barriers to entry. Anti-trust laws designed to prevent legal monopolies have been in existence since 1890 with the passing of the Sherman Act. It has gone through several re-incarnations since then, including the Federal Trade Commission Act, which promotes competition by prohibiting "unfair and anticompetitive practices" such as predatory pricing, which is pricing designed to drive current competitors out of the market and to discourage new ones. Mergers and acquisitions are also prohibited if they "tend to create a monopoly" or "substantially lessen competition."33 In the same way that anti-trust legislation has made a notable effect in preventing legal monopolies, some criminal legislation has made a notable effect in promoting criminal oligopolies because it has prevented smaller suppliers of illegal goods and services from competing on an equal basis with the big crime syndicates. They simply do not have the resources to engage in competition. Dwight Smith claims that
"[s]trong regulatory agencies can be used effectively to protect or increase one's domain at the expense of potential competitors. From the standpoint of the illicit businessman, the regulatory agency has a useful function in helping to maintain the stability in the marketplace of the black market enterprise."34
He goes on to further postulate that the black market entrepreneur may wish to manipulate the government to his advantage, but he would much rather have a government than not to have any legal authority at all because there is always the possibility of exploitation of law enforcement officials and legislators.35 An extension of this logic shows that if the motives involved are more economic than political, there is not much difference between the organized crime "corrupter" who bribes politicians and the lobbyist who solicits senators on behalf of major pharmaceutical companies or car manufacturers.
The consequences of Prohibition and its aftermath for the alcohol market suggests convincingly that organized crime syndicates would not persist in the face of legitimate competition. At the very least, illegal firms certainly would not prosper. After all, the practical purpose of monopolies is to suppress supply, not to augment it. The only reason oligopolies of illegal goods exist is because there is a large demand by households for these products and services. So instead of approaching the problem from the supply side, it may be better to confront the problem on the demand side. In a study done by the Rand Corporation, it was shown that if a one percent reduction in cocaine use is the goal of US drug enforcement policy, dollar for dollar spent, treatment (a demand side solution) is seven times more effective than seizure at the source (a supply side solution.)36 Alcohol and cigarettes are currently subject to heavy "sin taxes," which get passed on to the consumer by the retailer. "In both cases, the government is essentially imposing its preferences on those of the citizenry."37 If the real purpose of anti-organized crime legislation is protect society by reducing the use of other "sinful" activities which are currently illegal, then perhaps narcotics and prostitution should be fully legalized. This would permit stringent legislation, of the type imposed on other legal businesses, and heavy taxes to be levied on them, as a way of equalizing the externalities that are imposed on society through the use of these products. It would also take away monetary incentives for drug related violence and would free courts that are currently excessively backed up with petty drug offenses. Best of all, those who choose to consume these products would benefit from a crackdown on organized crime the same way that consumers of legal goods currently benefit from anti-trust legislation. However, the largest obstacles to implementing this sort of legislation would be the not only the corrupt politicians and police officers who receive a nice steady supplement to their bureaucratic wages courtesy of their local organized crime syndicate, but also the very people who most vehemently profess to condemn these activities and wish to see them cease to exist. They believe it is the fault of the organized crime syndicates for supplying the illegal goods and services; if the supply dried up, the demand would cease to exist. The acknowledgment needs to be made by policy makers that the crime syndicates came into being to fill the demand for illicit goods and services. Once again, the history of Prohibition, which many cite to be the beginning of organized crime, gives strong evidence to this statement. Future research and scholarship could focus on methods to eradicate the monopoly profits from the illegal industries organized crime is involved in. This seems to be the most rational approach because until those large profits are abolished, their lure will be too great for many to resist.
Abadinsky, Howard. Organized Crime. 2nd ed. Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1985.
Adelstein,Richard P. "The Moral Costs of Crime: Prices, Information and Organization." The Costs of Crime. Ed. Charles M. Gray. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1979. 233-56.
Anderson, Annelise Graebner. The Business of Organized Crime: A Cosa Nostra Family. Stanford, C.A.: Hoover University Press, 1979.
Block, Alan A. "A Modern Marriage of Convenience: A Collaboration Between Organized Crime and U.S. Intelligence." Organized Crime: A Global Perspective. Ed. Robert J. Kelly. New Jersey: Rowman & Littlefield, 1986. 58-77.
Block, Alan A. and William J. Chambliss. Organizing Crime. New York: Elsevier, 1982.
Block, Alan A. "Part I: The Historical Perspective." Perspectives on Organizing Crime: Essays in Opposition. The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991. 2-32.
Clotfelter, Charles F. and Robert D. Seeley. "The Private Costs of Crime." Gray 213-32.
Cooter, Robert and Thomas Ulen. "An Economic Theory of Crime and Criminal Law." Law and Economics. USA: Harper and Collins, 1988. 506-32.
Cressey, Donald R. "Methodological Problems in the Study of Organized Crime as a Social Problem." Annals of the American Academy of Poliical and Social Science 374 (1967): 101-12. Organized Crime. Ed. Nikos Passas. England: Dartmouth Publishing Co. Ltd., 1995. 3-14.
Gambetta, Diego. The Sicilian Mafia. Cambridge, M.A.: Harvard University Press, 1993.
Gambetta, Diego. "Fragments of an Economic Theory of the Mafia." Archives Europeennes de Sociologie 29 (1988): 127-45. Passas 171-90.
Gray, Charles M. "The Costs of Crime: Review and Overview." Gray 13-32.
Haller, Mark H. "Illegal Enterprise: A Theoretical and Historical Interpretation." Criminology 28 (1990): 207-35. Passas 225-54.
Kelly, Robert J. "Criminal Worlds: Looking Down on Society from Below." Kelly 10-31.
Lupsha, Peter A. "Individual Choice, Material Culture and Organized Crime." Criminology 19 (1981): 3-24. Passas 105-26.
Lupsha, Peter A. "Organized Crime in the United States." Kelly 32-57.
Maltz, Michael D. "On Defining 'Organized Crime': The Development of a Definition and a Typology." Crime and Delinquency 22 (1976): 338-46. Passas 15-24.
Nelli, Humbert S. "Overview." Kelly 1-9.
Pindyck, Robert S. and Daniel L.Rubinfeld. "Monopolistic Competition and Oligopoly." Microeconomics. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1992. 423-61.
Reuter, Peter and Jonathan B. Rubinstein. "Fact, fancy, and coganized crime." The Public Interest 53 (1978): 45-68. Passas 55-78.
Reuter, Peter, Robter MacCoun and Patrick Murphy. Money from Crime: A Study of the Economics of Drug Dealing in Washington D.C. The Rand Publication Series. Santa Monica: The Rand Corporation, 1990.
Rizzo, Mario J. "Economic Costs, Moral Costs or Retributive Justice: The Rational of Criminal Law." Gray 257-78.
Shelling, Thomas C. "Economics and Criminal Enterprise." Choice and Consequences. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984. 158-78. "What is the Business of Organized Crime?" 179-94.
Simon, Carl P. and Ann D. Witte. Beating the System: the Underground Economy. Boston: Auburn House Publishing Company. 1982.
Smith Jr., Dwight C. "Some Things that may be More Important to Understand about Organized Crime than Cosa Nostra." University of Florida Law Review 26 (1971): 1-30. Passas 25-54.
Viviano, Frank. "The New Mafia Order." Mother Jones, 1994. Cited online.
Witte, Ann Dryden. "Informal and Underground Economies and the Impact on Ungovernability." National Strategy Information Center, Inc. March 12, 1994.
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