This authoritative three volume set brings together the most important published papers on the economic analysis of corruption and illegal markets. It ranges from theoretical issues explaining the nature of corruption to analogies between governments regulating legal markets and organised crime ruling over illegal markets. Particular attention is paid to the effects of standard public policies, such as standard controls or quality standards, on the development of shadow and illegal markets, and consequently on the incentives to invest in bribery and extortion. The book highlights the consequences of corruption both for the efficiency of a market system and on the long run growth of the economy with special reference to developing countries.

This book uses economic theory to analyze the different aspects of organized crime. The theory of rent-seeking is adopted to help understand the origin of criminal organizations, while modern industrial organization theory is used to explain the design of internal rules. The market behavior of organized crime is analyzed, the "crime and economics" approach being applied to the analysis of corruption that occurs when the organized crime sector and the government collude to exploit their monopoly on rule-making. Each chapter outlines the normative results of the analysis in order to design more sophisticated deterrence policies.