For many years the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), the Centro Interuniversitario di Studi Teorici per la Politica Economica (STEP), and the Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche (DSE) dellapos;Universita di Bologna have cooperated in organising conferences, seminars and other scientific meetings, both institutionally and through the individual participation of their members. This cooperation has also involved the Università Bocconi (Milano) and the Universita di Venezia. Indeed, on the Italian side, the organisation of these activities gave rise in the late 1980s to the formation of the Italian Macroeconomic Policy Group, which produced, together with CEPR, a number of successful conference volumes: on the European Monetary System, on the prospects of a European Central Bank, and on the Italian experience with high public debt.

These scientific endeavours were generally focused on problems of macroeconomic policy in open economies. The subject matter of the conference that produced the papers collected in this volume falls outside the traditional definition of macroeconomic policy. Yet, besides its specific importance in theory and unfortunate relevance in practice, we feel that the economics of organised crime goes well beyond the realm of ‘industrial organisation’. The importance of this sector of human activity involves the economies of some countries and their international relations in such a deep and pervasive way that it may even affect the economic performance and constrain the macroeconomic policies of their entire economies. This is the reason why we believe that the subject fits very well within the line of themes on which the scientific cooperation among our institutions has developed through the years.