The mafia firm’s instability has internal structural causes, not only external shocks.

Evidence

Intuitively, however, it is tempting to seek more fundamental reasons for the instability of the mafia firm which could bring about its bankruptcy and put its clients at risk. Such reasons might include the personal nature of the relationship with customers; the competition among mafiosi themselves; and the number of transactions an agent in a complex world must engage in even when trust is a scarce resource. — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 64

Categorization

• QUESTION: Gambetta lists these as hypotheses without resolving them here — worth chasing which one actually explains mafia firm failure in the later empirical chapters.