Lifting the Eyepatch. The Business Models of Piracy

Doctoral Thesis / Dissertation from the year 2017 in the subject Economics - Finance, grade: cum laude, Helmut Schmidt University - University of the Federal Armed Forces Hamburg (Finanzwissenschaft), language: English, abstract: The purpose of this dissertation is to 'lift the eyepatch' to visualize the different business models of piracy without self-imposed limitations, to lay the foundation for a more profound and comprehensive research approach. To overcome this blind spot, pirates are not morally judged for their criminal behavior but considered as equal entrepreneurs of the economy. Instead of insinuating pirates to rush at single hijackings to make quick money desperately, they are believed to run professional companies, which base on sophisticated and repeatable business models. This impartial assumption makes the topic assessable by macro- and microeconomic tools and models. Furthermore, this approach allows analyzing the subject from a pirate's perspective. From this opposite viewpoint, an economic assessment facilitates the identification of framework-factors, which have been responsible for the emergence and development of piracy in general. In a next step, the application of business models helps to reveal further relevant factors, which trigger the internal procedures of the piracy companies, running a business in the hotspots of South-East Asia, West Africa, and East Africa. These deduced elements will then be illustrated in an explorative qualitative cause and effect model, to visualize their interrelation and the corresponding processes between them, which ultimately lead to the feasibility-assessment of piracy businesses. These visualized business models can be used as templates for further research objectives and enable academics to take the perspective of criminal entrepreneurs, to reveal new insights and weak-spots of illegal business models in general. These findings could be used to tighten effective counter-measures, which may not have been considered up to now. Metaphorically speaking, this dissertation aims at revealing the concealed treasure-map, which contains the 'secret' core factors and processes determining the feasibility of the criminal business and thereby the ultimate rationale of the emergence of professional piracy per se.