Increasing Benefits, Decreasing Risks: The Impact of Learning

Abstract

A solid operational system when starting a business and during its first years in operation is no guarantee of ongoing success. In addition, a criminal entrepreneur is involved in a fight to survive against threats from two sides: rivals in the same line of business and a government that wants to destroy the business. Added to that is the fact that, if an entrepreneur wants to maximize his/her profits, he/she needs to have the tools available that will permit that maximization. He/she can do that, for example, through diversification of the business. This brings us to a study of the intersections of smuggling of migrants (SoM) and trafficking of human beings (THB) with other business practices and to an investigation into the continued learning behaviour displayed by entrepreneurs and sometimes by their henchmen.