Narconomics: How to Run a Drug Cartel

After years of Drugwars on the older graphing calculators (remember those?) you might think that you’re an expert on the drug trade, but Tom Wainwright’s Narconomics: How to Run a Drug Cartel has all kinds of information you probably never thought about. Rather than investigating the entire thing from the perspective of “the war on drugs,” Wainwright focuses on the multi-billion dollar international drug industry as a business. Using classical economics and modern business theory, along with seven years of reporting in more than a dozen countries, Wainwright makes insights about areas like supply and demand, R&D, mergers and acquisitions, media relations and social responsibility that most of us associate with Fortune 500 businesses and not drug cartels.