中文摘要
本文研究俄罗斯黑手党（vory-v-zakone）的起源及其后果。利用一个通过网络抓取获得的独特数据集，其中包含5,000多名黑手党头目的详细传记，我首先表明，俄罗斯黑手党起源于苏联古拉格，并且在整个20世纪90年代的俄罗斯，其活动踪迹可见于集中营最初所在地附近。随后，我采用工具变量方法，利用俄罗斯黑手党与这些集中营的邻近程度进行识别，结果表明，20世纪90年代存在黑手党的俄罗斯社区经历了犯罪活动的急剧上升，这主要由1991年苏联解体后不久爆发的精英暴力所驱动。暴力激增并不因受害者类型而有所区别。此外，在vory成员要么全部是俄罗斯族、要么全都不是俄罗斯族的地区，黑手党存在对精英暴力的影响较小，这表明该犯罪组织内部本身存在一定程度的族群冲突。
Abstract
This paper studies the origins and consequences of the Russian mafia ( vory-v-zakone ). Using a unique web scraped dataset containing detailed biographies of more than 5,000 mafia leaders, I first show that the Russian mafia originated in the Soviet Gulag , and could be found near the camps’ initial locations throughout the 1990s Russia. Then, using an instrumental variable approach that exploits the proximity of the Russian mafia to the camps, I show that Russian communities with mafia presence in the 1990s experienced a dramatic rise in crime driven by elite violence which erupted shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The surge in violence was indiscriminate with respect to the victim type. Furthermore, the effect of mafia presence on elite violence was smaller in places where either all or none of the vory were ethnic Russians, suggesting some degree of ethnic conflict within the criminal organization itself.