Kidnap, Anja Shortland
Kidnap, Anja Shortland
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Kidnap
Inside the Ransom Business

Author: Anja Shortland

Narrator: Henrietta Meire

Unabridged: 9 hr 39 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 10/08/2019

Synopsis

Kidnap for ransom is a lucrative but tricky business. Millions of people live, travel, and work in areas with significant kidnap risks, yet kidnaps of foreign workers, local VIPs, and tourists are surprisingly rare and the vast majority of abductions are peacefully resolved—often for remarkably low ransoms. In fact, the market for hostages is so well ordered that the crime is insurable. This is a puzzle: ransoming a hostage is the world's most precarious trade. What would be the "right" price for your loved one—and can you avoid putting others at risk by paying it? What prevents criminals from maltreating hostages? How do you (safely) pay a ransom? And why would kidnappers release a potential future witness after receiving their money?

Kidnap: Inside the Ransom Business uncovers how a group of insurers at Lloyd's of London have solved these thorny problems for their customers. Based on interviews with industry insiders (from both sides), as well as hostage stakeholders, it uncovers an intricate and powerful private governance system ordering transactions between the legal and the criminal economies.

About Anja Shortland

Anja Shortland is a Reader in Political Economy at King's College London. She has worked as an academic economist at Leicester and Brunel Universities, rising to fame for her work on the economics of Somali piracy. She now studies private governance in the world's trickiest markets: hostages, fine art, and antiquities-and how people live, trade, and invest in complex and hostile territories.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Harold

This is a poorly organized and written book on a fascinating subject, the economics of global kidnapping. What appears as a totally unregulated market, has a structure and guiding principles which are not apparent to the uninitiated. This is a basic course in how markets become established, and grow......more

Goodreads review by Christine

Admittedly parts of the book were beyond my very simplistic understanding of economic systems and game theory, and the utterly FASCINATING content is occasionally presented in a deceptively sterile manner. But. One of the most fascinating books I've read in ages. Highly, highly recommend. I didn't g......more

Goodreads review by Pete

Kidnap : Inside the Ransom Business (2019) by Anja Shortland is a fascinating investigation of how kidnapping works and how it can be constrained and the damage minimised. There is an excellent episode of the Econtalk podcast where Shortland is interviewed about the book. The book has four sections: K......more

Goodreads review by Oki

Kidnap is a fascinating book for anyone interested in any of the aspects of niche economics/ freakonomics, organized crime, the realities of life in the developing world, poverty, the diversity of social norms / mores, survivalists, the insurance industry, the intersection of the private and public......more

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