{"title":"The economics of extortion: Theory and the case of the Sicilian Mafia","authors":"Luigi Balletta , Andrea Mario Lavezzi","doi":"10.1016/j.jce.2023.05.003","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This paper studies extortion of firms operating in legal sectors by a profit-maximizing criminal organization. We develop a simple taxation model under asymmetric information to find the Mafia optimal extortion as a function of firms’ observable characteristics, namely size and sector. We test the predictions of the model on a unique dataset on extortion in Sicily, the Italian region where the Sicilian Mafia, one of the most ancient criminal organizations, operates. In line with our theoretical model, our empirical findings show that extortion is strongly concave with respect to firm size and highly regressive. The percentage of profits appropriated by the Mafia ranges from 40% for small firms to 2% for large enterprises. We derive some implications of these findings for market structure and economic development.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48183,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Comparative Economics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.8000,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0147596723000501/pdfft?md5=3fc1c6330e98071b7da0d947a37b9c5c&pid=1-s2.0-S0147596723000501-main.pdf","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Comparative Economics","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0147596723000501","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
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Abstract
This paper studies extortion of firms operating in legal sectors by a profit-maximizing criminal organization. We develop a simple taxation model under asymmetric information to find the Mafia optimal extortion as a function of firms’ observable characteristics, namely size and sector. We test the predictions of the model on a unique dataset on extortion in Sicily, the Italian region where the Sicilian Mafia, one of the most ancient criminal organizations, operates. In line with our theoretical model, our empirical findings show that extortion is strongly concave with respect to firm size and highly regressive. The percentage of profits appropriated by the Mafia ranges from 40% for small firms to 2% for large enterprises. We derive some implications of these findings for market structure and economic development.
期刊介绍：
The mission of the Journal of Comparative Economics is to lead the new orientations of research in comparative economics. Before 1989, the core of comparative economics was the comparison of economic systems with in particular the economic analysis of socialism in its different forms. In the last fifteen years, the main focus of interest of comparative economists has been the transition from socialism to capitalism.
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