WP 2024-04.
Executive Summary
Intuitively, crime and entrepreneurship are radically opposed in desirability and empirical effects. Yet, recent research has deliberately chosen to go beyond certain obvious facts, creating — instead of resolving — theoretical and practical problems. To discuss the limitations of what can be called the “criminal-entrepreneurial” model, this paper pays particular attention to the concept of economic agents developed by the Austrian school of economics, which has extensively theorised and defended the role of entrepreneurship in market systems. From the Austrian school’s perspective, the crucial role of economic freedoms and individual liberty assumes greater importance when discussing socio-economic processes. These aspects are crucially important for organised crime research but are not sufficiently underlined in most of the current literature. On these premises, enterprising and criminal actions are distinguished on the basis of four general characteristics (i.e., competition, alertness, uncertainty, creativity). Findings show how, by taking enterprising agents (rather than rational agents) more seriously, organised crime and entrepreneurship are not only sharply different but profoundly incompatible.
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The non-entrepreneurial and anti-entrepreneurial nature of organised crime
