What is it about?
Many scientific fields began seemingly unrelated phenomena are examined using a common set of questions and concepts. This paper asks whether the same can be done for illegal markets. By comparing markets for drugs, wildlife products, firearms, human smuggling, counterfeit goods, money laundering, illegal fishing, and more, it explores what these markets have in common, what makes them different, and whether there are broad principles that can help explain illegal markets as a class. It also proposes a new way of categorizing the diverse instances of markets that fall within the class of illegal markets.
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Why is it important?
Illegal markets generate enormous social, economic, and environmental harms, but research has mostly studied them one market at a time. Looking across markets reveals patterns that are easy to miss when focusing on a single case. The paper shows that many characteristics often attributed to illegality are actually driven by the nature of the good or service being sold, while other important features are shared across many illegal markets. This is a step toward building a more general science of illegal markets that can inform future research and policy.
Perspectives
I hope readers find this paper thought-provoking. After nearly four decades studying illegal markets, I remain struck by how much we know about particular markets and how little we know about illegal markets as a class. My hope is that this paper feels a bit like the beginning of a conversation: an invitation to look beyond individual markets and ask whether there are broader principles that connect them. Writing it gave me the chance to step back from immediate policy concerns and simply indulge a scientific curiosity about these fascinating and consequential social phenomena. Even if readers disagree with some of the ideas, I hope the paper encourages them to think about illegal markets in a new way.
Jonathan Caulkins
Carnegie Mellon University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: A budding science of illegal markets, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, August 2026, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2511780123.
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