64: Stay in School, Even if You're Planning to Join the Mob

Tracy Alloway (0:09)

Hello, and welcome to another edition of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:14)

And I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:15)

So, Joe, this is the second edition of our very exciting, very nefarious money markets and crime series.

Joe Weisenthal (0:25)

We're really starting the year on a very sort of dark and grim note.

Earlier in the year, we talked about possibility of a bond market crash, and now we're on this series of the economics and markets of crime. But I'm really enjoying these, and I'm excited about today's episode. What are we going to talk about?

Tracy Alloway (0:44)

Well, so I was going to ask, are you, I think there's a general tendency for guys in particular to be really into the mafia and mafia movies especially. Are you one of those guys who kind of like worships the godfather?

Joe Weisenthal (0:59)

I wouldn't say I worship the godfather. I really liked the godfather movies. I also, The Sopranos was definitely one of my favorite TV shows of all time. So I wouldn't say I'm like an obsessive or anything, but I do find it to be a very interesting topic, and I like a lot of the media surrounding it.

Tracy Alloway (1:18)

Okay, so today, I think you'll like this topic in that case. So today we're going to be talking about the idea of education and the economics of education and what role they play, if any, in being a good mafioso, I guess.

Joe Weisenthal (1:38)

Right, because we know there's plenty of evidence that having a good education in the non-criminal world is probably helpful for getting ahead, for making more money, for all kinds of positive life outcomes. And there's a lot of ambiguity about why. Is it just about signaling? Does anyone actually learn anything in college that they use?

Or is it about something else? And so it's kind of an interesting way to study the value of education by whether it also helps you get ahead in the world of organized crime.

Tracy Alloway (2:10)

Yeah, but there's also this school of thought that says that if you get a higher education, then you're less likely to resort to crime, right?

Joe Weisenthal (2:18)

Right.

Tracy Alloway (2:19)

So the idea of gangsters actually actively seeking out education, in theory, maybe should deter them from a life of crime. I don't know. That's what we're going to find out, right?

Joe Weisenthal (2:31)

You think so. Of course, and it's not the mafia, but there's that famous moment in the show, The Wire, where the drug kingpin Stringer Bell is seen in an economics class at the local college.

Tracy Alloway (2:43)

That's right. And he learns about supply and demand, supply-demand curve, right? That's a great scene.

Okay, so here with us to talk about all of this is Giovanni Mastro Buoni. He is a professor of economics at the University of Essex, and he is also chair at the Collegio Carlo Alberto in Italy. And he actually wrote a paper with some of his colleagues called Returns to Education in Criminal Organizations Did Going to College Help Michael Corleone. So, clearly a Godfather reference right there.

Joe Weisenthal (3:20)

Let's do it.

Tracy Alloway (3:32)

Thank you, Yvonne. Thank you so much for joining us today.

I mean, I guess I have to start with the obvious, which is what inspired you to actually look at the subject, because connecting education and returns and college and the mafia isn't necessarily something that a lot of researchers would look into.

Giovanni Mastrobuoni (3:57)

It was a book, a biography by Buonanno, who was one of the sort of leaders in the Italian American mafia in New York, in Brooklyn.

And in his autobiography, he talks about how having sort of a higher level of education than his peers within the mafia helped him to become one of the bosses of one of the New York families. Having already worked on the Italian American mafia and having the data that would somehow allow me to have a measure of economic success and of education made the trick.

Joe Weisenthal (4:52)

Before we get in to this question of whether having an education really helps one get ahead in the mafia and why that might be, let's just talk about the data first. How do you even begin to measure something like this? How do you know which of the mafioso went to college and how do you know how well they did economically? It's not like their salaries are made public or anything like that.

Giovanni Mastrobuoni (5:16)

Yes, exactly. And so, it's not easy in this. I always joke saying that the mafioso are somehow the less likely to respond to surveys, which is how we usually find out about how much money people make and what level of education they have. So, it all starts with some declassified files by the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, which was an agency trying to crack down the mafia way before the FBI did. So, we're talking about the 1950s and 60s when the FBI was quite busy trying to find the communists in the country. So, what the Federal Bureau of Narcotics did was to sort of build like a huge folder where somehow each page was dedicated to a mobster. Now, we don't know exactly how they managed to track down so many mobsters. I mean, most likely, because there is no evidence.