Transnational crimes: how nations should cooperate and why they don't

Official URL: https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/sjoe.12534

Chain-form crime partnerships and intelligence sharing by national authorities to detect cross-border partners create multiple externalities in the combat against transnational crimes and illicit trafficking. Cooperative enforcements that minimize global harms prioritize the country with lower intelligence production and/or superior detection capability. In equilibrium, as in practice, national enforcements are underbudgeted and might prioritize the wrong side – predominantly the high-budget, high-harm country. Governments might not share intelligence out of fear of importing enforcement burden, and harmonizing criminal sanctions alone might not be effective. Shocks on crime deterrence in a target country are first absorbed by source countries, implying weaker horizontal crime transfer effects than projected.