{"p"=>"Why are some illegal markets associated with lethal violence while others are not? Existing cross-national research treats organized crime as a unified phenomenon, obscuring substantial variation in how distinct illicit economies generate lethal outcomes. This paper disaggregates organized crime into specific market categories and examines their differential association with homicide using panel data for 95 countries over 2021–2025. Combining fixed- and random-effects models with structural and institutional controls, the analysis reveals substantial heterogeneity. Arms trafficking shows the strongest and most consistent positive association with homicide across all specifications. Cocaine markets show a positive association in random-effects models but not in fixed-effects estimates, indicating that the cocaine–violence link is driven primarily by structural positioning on trafficking corridors rather than within-country fluctuations over time. Heroin and synthetic drug markets display negative associations, consistent with organizational structures that rely on routinized logistics and corruption-based governance rather than territorial coercion. Human trafficking, human smuggling, and extortion show no systematic association with lethal violence, not because coercion is absent, but because homicide is actively self-defeating in their economic logic since it destroys the human asset, eliminates the revenue stream, and invites disproportionate enforcement. These findings suggest that violence is not an intrinsic feature of illegality but a contingent outcome shaped by two conditions: whether a market requires territorial control, and whether lethal violence undermines the market's own operation. The paper advances a market-governance framework linking patterns of lethal violence to differences in territorial control, logistical organization, and enforcement exposure across illegal markets, with implications for how organized crime is measured, compared, and regulated. "}