Criminal groups govern millions worldwide. Even in strong states, gangs resolve disputes
and provide security. Why do these duopolies of coercion emerge? Often, gangs fill …

How do organized criminal groups (OCGs) respond to military interventions intended to
weaken and subdue them? In many cases, such crackdowns have proven …

A growing body of evidence suggests that criminal organizations across the Global South
actively exploit natural resources in the communities where they operate with important …

This paper asks whether scarcity increases violence in markets that lack a centralized
authority. We construct a model in which, by raising prices, scarcity fosters violence. Guided …

This paper provides evidence that exposure to illegal labor markets during childhood leads
to the formation of industry‐specific human capital at an early age, putting children on a …

How does gang competition affect extortion? Using detailed data on individual extortion
payments to gangs and sales from a leading wholesale distributor of consumer goods and …

The number of major Drug Trafficking Organizations (known as cartels) in Mexico increased
from four to nine over the last two decades. This was accompanied by an increase in drug …

Governments in the Americas rely on aggressive policing tactics to fight crime, despite scant
evidence of impact. While recent studies depict militarized policing as a driver of violence …

Some theories predict that profits facilitate peace in illegal markets, while others predict that
profits fuel violence. I provide empirical evidence from drug trafficking in Venezuela. Using …

We show that the Mexican War on Drugs pushed drug cartels into large-scale oil theft. We
propose a simple model in which government crackdowns on one criminal sector induce …