Seminar "Mobsters beyond Rationality"
Tue 10 Mar
|Sciences Po
Date & Location
10 Mar 2026, 12:30 – 14:00
Sciences Po, 27 Rue Saint-Guillaume, 75007 Paris, France
Description
The risks of doing business in the underworld push criminals to behave with strict individual rationality. In theory, they should embody homo economicus at its rawest. This same pressure however makes it harder for them to build and sustain a well functioning organisation: while indispensable to sustain intra-criminal cooperation, an organisation demands a level of trust and loyalty, which is hard for them to achieve. Here Diego Gambetta describe how the Sicilian Mafia relied on superstition and social norms to meet that challenge, deterring betrayals and buttressing its internal hierarchy.
Speaker Diego Gambetta, Collegio Carlo Alberto
Chair Federico Varese, Sciences Po, CEE
