The significance of crime as an economic activity is often underestimated. Organised crime is big business, operating on a global scale. The tools of economics can help in understanding what might hinder this successful multinational activity, and on tackling the problems crime causes, from gang violence to drug abuse or people trafficking. Economic incentives can explain why people embark on criminal careers. In fact, without the economic analysis, policies on crime will probably fail. What can economics tell us about the consequences of proposals such as legalising drugs, putting more police on the streets, or sending more culprits to prison?

Photo of Nadia Campaniello.

Panel

Nadia Campaniello is a lecturer in the Department of Economics at the University of Essex. Her research interests include public economics, the economics of crime and labour economics.

Mirko Draca is a lecturer in the Department of Economics at the University of Warwick and a research associate at the Centre for Economic Performance, London School of Economics. Current research includes work on: prices and crime, the impact of international sanctions on the Iranian economy and the ‘shadow lobbying’ sector in Washington.

Tom Gash is a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Government and a Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the Mannheim School of Criminology at the London School of Economics. A regular contributor to debates on public policy and current affairs, he writes for the Independent, Guardian and Financial Times, and speaks frequently on television and radio advocating improvements in crime policy and wider public sector management. He was formerly a crime policy adviser in the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit, and has been an adviser to a range of crime policy reviews, including the Flanagan Review of Policing and the UK Drug Policy Commission.

David Skarbek is a senior lecturer in political economy at King’s College London. His research analyses how extralegal governance institutions form, operate, and evolve. His current research studies life in prisons around the globe. He is the author of the award-winning book The Social Order of the Underworld: How Prison Gangs Govern the American Penal System. Follow him on Twitter: @DavidSkarbek

Federico Varese is professor of criminology at Oxford University and the author of The Russian Mafia and Mafias on the Move: How Organised Crime Conquers New Territories. He also writes for The Times Literary Supplement and has published in The New York Times online, The Times and Dissent Magazine.