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
