David Skarbek

Political economist who studies governance in ungoverned spaces — most notably prison gangs as institutions that provide order and contract enforcement in environments where the state cannot.

Prison gangs as institutions: Skarbek's The Social Order of the Underworld shows that prison gangs emerged not from violence for its own sake but as governance structures — providing property rights, contract enforcement, and dispute resolution in environments where inmates cannot appeal to the state. The puzzle: why did prison gangs emerge in the 1950s-60s, not in the 1900s? Answer: when prisons were small, informal reputation systems worked; as prisons scaled and became racially integrated, they needed formal institutional structures. A case study in institutional economics applied to extreme conditions.