What Organized Crime Can Teach Students About Markets and Public Policy

ATLANTA - A map of gang territory might not look like an economics lesson. In Jason Alix Coupet's classroom, however, it can reveal how organizations divide markets, maintain monopolies and govern when formal institutions cannot - or will not - meet a community's needs.

Coupet, an associate professor of public management and policy in the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, teaches Economics of Crime, a course that uses organized crime as a case study for understanding markets, organizations and public institutions.

Despite its name, Coupet said, the course is less concerned with sensational accounts of criminal activity than with the systems that allow illicit organizations to emerge and endure.

"It's more about the structure and nature of institutions," Coupet said. "You can think about it as an economics of institutions or economics of organizations class, but through the lens of gangs."

This fall, the course will be available to graduate students for the first time.

An economist by training, Coupet studies public organizations, institutional design and the ways organizations interact with public policy. His research examines how public systems can operate more efficiently and what happens when they do not function as intended.

Organized crime gives students a revealing way to examine institutions because illicit organizations often emerge when formal systems break down, exclude certain groups or fail to respond to demand. Illegal markets still have customers, workers, prices, competitors and rules, as well as systems for resolving disputes, controlling territory and enforcing agreements.

Examining those systems does not excuse the violence or harm associated with them. Instead, it helps students investigate why the markets exist and why conventional policy responses may not eliminate them.

In Economics of Crime, Coupet uses historical cases, current events and familiar examples to make economic concepts concrete. In one discussion, he compared Chicago gang territories with airline routes to explore how organizations divide territory, limit competition and exercise market power.

"People digest things better when they can connect to them," Coupet said.

Course assignments require students to apply economic and organizational theory to real-world case studies. In addition to short writing assignments, policy memos and presentations, students produce a podcast analyzing an organized crime group, the market in which it operates and the institutional failures that allowed it to develop.

Kyla Goodman, a senior economics major who expects to graduate in May 2027, enrolled while searching for an elective to fulfill a degree requirement.

"I took a chance on it," Goodman said. "It was an elective and a small class, so I thought I might enjoy it. I certainly did."

Goodman's group examined the Sinaloa Cartel, including its hierarchy and the market conditions that allowed it to profit from the demand for heroin.

Despite the course's economic focus, Coupet said students do not need an extensive background in the field to take it. A basic understanding of markets can help, but curiosity matters more than an extensive background in economics - particularly curiosity about why markets sometimes work, why they fail and what emerges in the space between those outcomes.

Economics of Crime will be offered this fall as PMAP 8921, CRN 93311. The graduate section is open to students across disciplines, including doctoral students, and there are no prerequisites. Students may register through PAWS.

- Story by Tiffany (Orr) Harte, Communications Manager, The Graduate School