Gov-arrrgh-nance: Jolly Rogers and Dodgy Rulers

Arbeitspapier

In this paper, we argue that the effect of governance on the emergence of crimes of different levels of sophistication is highly non-linear. State failure, anarchy and a lack of infrastructure are not conducive to establishing any business, including illicit enterprises. At the bottom of the spectrum, therefore, both legal business and criminal gangs benefit from improved governance. With further improvements in governance criminal activities decline. We find strong and consistent support for this hypothesis using the International Maritime Bureau's dataset on piracy. Piracy is reported by ship-owners, giving a unique insight into crime in badly governed countries which were systematically excluded from previous analyses. We show that profitable forms of piracy flourish where on the one hand there is stability and infrastructure, but on the other hand the state does not have the capacity to intervene and/or bureaucrats can be bribed to turn a blind eye. For minor acts of theft from ships the pattern is quadratic: piracy first rises and then falls as governance improves.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: DIW Discussion Papers ; No. 1063

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law ; Other Economic Systems: Political Economy; Legal Institutions; Property Rights; Natural Resources; Energy; Environment; Regional Studies
• Subject: Piracy ; Illegal behaviour ; Law enforcement ; Legal institutions ; Governance-Ansatz ; Rechtsdurchsetzung ; Seeräuber ; Schifffahrt ; Kriminalität ; Schätzung ; Welt

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): De Groot, Olaf J. ; Shortland, Anja
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung (DIW)
• (where): Berlin
• (when): 2010

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/49416
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:42 AM CET