Mafia killings often result from client misunderstandings about the current validity of their protection.

Evidence

A Palermo builder asked why so many were killed and whether the victims could not simply have refrained from doing whatever it was that eventually provoked their murder, suggested that the killings may have been due to the uncertainty of information concerning the status of protectors during an unstable period. The victims, for instance, may have mistakenly competed for business which was meant to go to others simply because they did not grasp that their protection had become obsolete. Sometimes, he added, to save face, protectors encourage their clients to carry on despite the fact that their situation is far from secure (I-4). — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 509

Categorization

• XREF: Directly evidences the reader’s core Gambetta framework — protection as a information-intensive product whose value depends on status signals. Connects to the information-cost analysis in Milgrom et al. on medieval trade.
• ADDENDUM: Protectors deliberately withholding the deterioration of a client’s status parallels the role of reputation and information asymmetry in extralegal contracting from ‘Opting out of the Legal System’.