Tom Wainwright

Journalist/Author

Add to shortlist

Books

Books

Tom Wainwright is homepage editor of The Economist and deputy editor of The World in 2014. He joined the Britain section of The Economist in 2007, to cover a beat including crime and justice, migration and social affairs. In 2010 he became the newspaper's Mexico City bureau chief, responsible for coverage of Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean. He is the author of a 2012 special report on Mexico. Before joining The Economist Mr Wainwright was a trainee on the Daily Express, and a contributor to newspapers including the Times, theGuardian and the Daily Telegraph. He read philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford University, graduating in 2004. He has been interviewed on TV and radio in Britain, Mexico and the United States.

His first book NARCONOMICS: HOW TO RUN A DRUG CARTEL is due to be published in February 2016.

Non-Fiction

Publication DetailsNotes
2016

Ebury Press

Everything drug cartels do to survive and prosper they’ve learnt from big business – brand value and franchising from McDonald’s, supply chain management from Walmart, diversification from Coca-Cola. Whether it’s human resourcing, R&D, corporate social responsibility, off-shoring, problems with e-commerce or troublesome changes in legislation, the drug lords face the same strategic concerns companies like Ryanair or Apple. So when the drug cartels start to think like big business, the only way to understand them is using economics.

In Narconomics, Tom Wainwright meets everyone from coca farmers in secret Andean locations, deluded heads of state in presidential palaces, journalists with a price on their head, gang leaders who run their empires from dangerous prisons and teenage hitmen on city streets - all in search of the economic truth.