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Murder in the Marketplace

Author

Listed:
  • Biagi, Victoria
  • Cardazzi, Alexander
  • Porreca, Zachary

Abstract

Violence is often viewed as an intrinsic feature of illicit markets, driven by competition, disputes, and predation. We argue that the connection between violence and markets is not exclusive to illicit markets and that in the absence of strong institutions these factors exist ubiquitously. Using an estimator of spatial concentration, we document the empirical relationship between violence and markets in the 14th century. We then employ a large language model to analyze the coroner's accounts of the era's homicides, finding that many of these incidents were driven by avoidable escalations of business-related disputes. Employing a novel difference-in-differences estimator for spatial concentration, we proceed to causally identify the impacts of the introduction of London's first professional police force in the 19th century on this concentration. We find that the police force's introduction led to a 54% reduction in the degree of concentration of violence around marketplaces. Our findings suggest that it is not the nature of the commodities being sold in illicit markets that drives violence, but is rather the absence of formal institutions of enforcement and dispute resolution.

Suggested Citation

  • Biagi, Victoria & Cardazzi, Alexander & Porreca, Zachary, 2025. "Murder in the Marketplace," GLO Discussion Paper Series 1569, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
  • Handle: RePEc:zbw:glodps:1569
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    marketplace violence; medieval violence; spatial concentration; local large language model;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • K42 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law
    • N93 - Economic History - - Regional and Urban History - - - Europe: Pre-1913
    • R12 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Size and Spatial Distributions of Regional Economic Activity; Interregional Trade (economic geography)
    • C21 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Cross-Sectional Models; Spatial Models; Treatment Effect Models
    • K40 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - General
    • N90 - Economic History - - Regional and Urban History - - - General, International, or Comparative

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