Free favors act as loss-leader advertising for mafia protection services.

Evidence

More effective still is speaking through deeds: acts of generosity are among the preferred means of advertising. Anecdotes of this nature are not just isolated stories, nor, given their quantity and the variety of sources, can they be dismissed as myth. Dozens of people in Palermo told me of incidents in which the local mafioso had helped them, their friends, old ladies, and even tourists to recover stolen goods, redress a wrong, or solve disputes with neighbors. … These minor services rarely require monetary compensation but are rendered for free, at most creating an unspecified debt whose settlement is postponed. Still, they perform a valuable economic function in the mafioso’s strategy: like a free wine tasting, they offer a sample of his abilities, boost his reputation, and indirectly mock the public authorities incapable of recovering the cherished necklace, a gift from one’s dear deceased grandmother, snatched on the street. — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 122

Categorization

• XREF: The free-wine-tasting logic maps directly onto Gambetta’s signaling model and the reader’s Milgrom framework — free services create an unspecified future debt, a credible-commitment mechanism not unlike the Godfather’s ‘someday I may ask a favor’.
• QUESTION: The ‘unspecified debt whose settlement is postponed’ is a rich commitment mechanism — does Gambetta elsewhere connect this to hostage-style bonding or to long-horizon reciprocity games?