Turf and Illegal Drug Market Competition between Gangs

Abstract

Street-level illegal drug markets generate much of the violence and intimidation that local communities face nowadays. These markets are mainly driven by territorial gangs who finance their activities through the sale of drugs. Understanding how the existence of both turf and drug market competition may have unintended consequences of law enforcement policies on violence is the main contribution of the paper. We propose a two-stage game-theoretical model where two profit maximizing gangs compete in prices and invest in guns. We find that policies such as traditional or community policing can have different and unexpected effects on the level of violence.

Labor Markets and Sustainability: Short-Run Dynamics and Long-Run Equilibrium

“…These include, but are not limited to, noise pollution associated with airports and other infrastructure that accompany urbanization [52][53][54]. Additionally, issues associated with gang-related violent crime [55] and property crimes affiliated with large-city amenities, such as sporting events [56,57] and tourist attractions [58], also present opportunities for modifying our extensions of the Harris-Todaro framework described above. Building upon new work by Yu and Chow [13] by modeling growing income inequality in urban centers [59,60] would also advance the literature in this area of economics.…”