Dear Colleagues,

Scholars have treated crime as a problem of incentives and costs since Becker’s work in the 1960s, and the field has since moved well beyond the individual offender’s calculus. Crime affects where firms invest, how labour markets function, what governments spend, and how far citizens trust their institutions. It takes many forms, from violent crime, including femicide and other gender-based violence, to financial fraud and organized crime and its costs fall unevenly across households and regions; where corruption is entrenched or illicit markets are large, it can act as a real brake on development. Understanding these dynamics has only grown more urgent as digital finance, cross-border illicit flows, and violence have reshaped the scale of the problem in several parts of the world. For this Topical Collection, we are looking for encyclopedia entries and comprehensive reviews on the socio-economic causes and consequences of crime. Contributions from economics, finance, criminology, law, and public policy are all welcome. We are especially interested in work that crosses these boundaries, that uses rigorous and transparent methods, including credible causal identification. Cross-national comparisons and single-country studies are equally in scope, and we particularly encourage submissions on economic causes, costs and policy responses to crime in developing, emerging and transition economies, which remain under-represented in the literature. We welcome submissions on any topic in the economics of crime. The themes below are indicative rather than exhaustive.

1. Economic and social determinants of crime: labour markets, unemployment, wages, and criminal participation; poverty, inequality, and the socioeconomic roots of offending; education, human capital, and crime; femicide, domestic violence, and other gender-based violence—determinants and economic costs; the distributional and welfare costs of crime for households and communities; crime as a barrier to investment, entrepreneurship, and firm growth; comparative rural and urban studies; gender-sensitive analyses.
2. Economic and developmental consequences: crime, corruption, and economic growth; the shadow economy, informality, and unreported activity; crime and the business cycle; recessions, shocks, and offending;regional and spatial patterns in crime and their economic effects; public expenditure on criminal justice and its opportunity costs; research on unequal regional and community impacts.
3. Corruption, illicit markets and financial crime: corruption, rent-seeking, and institutional quality; perceptions of corruption and their measurement; bribery, state capture, and public procurement; anti-corruption policy design and its economic evaluation; money laundering, terrorist financing, and illicit financial flows; securities fraud, insider trading, and market manipulation; Ponzi and pyramid schemes, accounting fraud, and corporate misconduct; tax evasion, illicit tax avoidance, and tax enforcement; cybercrime, digital fraud, and crime in crypto-asset markets.
4. Deterrence, criminal justice expenditure and policy evaluation: the economics of deterrence, policing, and sentencing; incarceration, reentry, recidivism, and labour-market reintegration; cost–benefit and cost-effectiveness evaluation of crime-control policy; private security, insurance, and the private response to crime; economic recovery, state-building, and institutional reconstruction after crime and organized violence; court efficiency, judicial independence, and their economic effects.
5. Trust, inequality, safety perceptions and institutional legitimacy;fear of crime, subjective safety, and their economic correlates; punitiveness, public attitudes, and the demand for punishment; crime, migration, populism, and the political economy of insecurity; forced displacement, refugee flows, and migration driven by violence, crime, and insecurity; trust, social capital, and the societal spillovers of crime; terrorism and political violence—economic causes and effects; studies connecting economic indicators with legitimacy, social cohesion and community safety.
6. Illicit markets and organized crime: the economics of drug markets, trafficking, and prohibition; organized crime, extortion, and protection markets; human trafficking and forced labour; environmental crime and illicit trade in natural resources; natural resource wealth, the resource curse, and their links to conflict, corruption, and organized crime;state fragility, weak governance, and the political economy of organized crime.

Dr. Burak Doğan
Dr. Fadime İrem Doğan
Dr. N. Barış Vardar
Collection Editors illicit markets