Above all, owning a protection firm means owning a name, a reputation for supplying convincing protection. Unfortunately, however, the nature of reputation is such that the assets based on it are elusive, fragile, difficult to bequeath or trade. Property rights, as an economic rather than a legal concept, concern the power of an individual to profit from and alienate, or transfer, a particular asset (Barzel 1989: 2). While... quite clear that income can be derived from owning a name as a mafioso, the power to alienate the ownership of that name suffers from severe limitations which make it particularly difficult for a protection firm to protect its own property rights.

XREF: Connects to intellectual property and brand economics — reputation behaves like an intangible asset that owners struggle to alienate.

Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Busi…, loc. 155