by LEONID KOSALS and ANASTASIA DUBOVA
Recently, J. Beckert and F. Wehinger (2011) argued about the importance of studies of illegal markets for economic sociology. When approaching this field one should keep in mind that the dividing lines between legal and illegal markets are often blurred. It is especially true for transformation countries with underdeveloped institutional setting and a lack of traditions of democratic legal regulation of economic behaviour.
In this paper we consider these blurred boundaries taking an example of the shadow economic activities of police officers in Russia, in which the legal and illegal components are closely interconnected. We use a body of literature and empirical research compiled in the 2000s in Russia to shed some light on the off-duty activities of police officers as economic actors.
Economic Sociology (pp.21-28) for more