ABSTRACT
In 1958, George Vold introduced the concept of “the economic determinist approach,” namely “the proposition that economic life is fundamental and therefore the determining influence upon which all social and cultural arrangements are made.”1 The idea here is that the “economic life” has a determining influence on crime in general and transnational organized crime in particular. Since the 1960s, the relationship between crime and economics has
been the subject of scholarly debate. For example, the economist Loretta Napoleoni claims that one of the most far-reaching and damaging effects of the deregulation of markets, in particular the financial markets, has been, first, the emergence of the “new economy of terror,” the international economic system run primarily by armed organizations to self-finance the armed struggle and, second, “the merging of the new economics of terror with the international illegal and criminal economy.”2
