The 1950s cartel’s emergence is causally underdetermined by the record

Evidence

It is not clear what prompts certain mafiosi to act independently; nor is it clear whether those who do so are predominantly dissatisfied customers raking matters into their own hands or members hoping to replace their boss and become autonomous suppliers of protection. The two explanations are not mutually exclusive, but Marsala’s and Calderone’s words tend to suggest the former rather than the latter. Finally, we do not know whether in the late 1950s the protection market became more unstable (the extension of protection to tobacco smugglers and drug dealers may have played a part) or whether it was purely accidental that the possibility of resolving long-standing problems just happened to dawn on the mafiosi at that time. — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 292

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth chasing: did market instability from narcotics/smuggling protection trigger the cartelization, in line with Milgrom’s claim that growing trade raises monitoring costs? The reader could test the mechanism.