Some approaches for understanding the economics of the illegal drug trade

Abstract

The following article provides an approximate study of the illegal drug trade, approaching it as an economic activity criminal in character and adopting a focus from various angles of analysis. We aim to perform a kind of characterization allowing us to account for the economic rationale underlying the behavior of the actors involved, the configuration and the logic behind the organizational structures connecting such actors, as well as the microeconomic implications. We attempt to employ a perspective mostly harnessing a descriptive analysis of certain strands of logic defining the economic dimension underpinning the behavior of the social groups and actors, without limiting ourselves to a particular case study, instead turning to them to feed the present study.