Law enforcement with criminal organizations and endogenous collaboration

This paper proposes a simple framework consisting of a law enforcement model in which criminal organizations (Mafias) can collaborate with each other to control an illegal market. Within this framework, we investigate two different situations: (1) a single monopolistic criminal organization operation or (2) an organization collaborating with another criminal organization. Depending on the quality of the controlled illegal market, the welfare implications of these scenarios vary. This paper also investigates an incentive for criminal organizations to engage in endogenous cooperation. As a result, we explore how criminal organizations' incentives coincide with social welfare implications.