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Does Legalized Prostitution Increase Human Trafficking?

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Author Info

  • Seo-Young Cho

    (Georg-August-University Göttingen)

  • Axel Dreher

    (Heidelberg University)

  • Eric Neumayer

    (London School of Economics and Political Science)

Abstract

This paper investigates the impact of legalized prostitution on human trafficking inflows. According to economic theory, there are two opposing effects of unknown magnitude. The scale effect of legalizing prostitution leads to an expansion of the prostitution market, increasing human trafficking, while the substitution effect reduces demand for trafficked women as legal prostitutes are favored over trafficked ones. Our empirical analysis for a cross-section of up to 150 countries shows that the scale effect dominates the substitution effect. On average, the legalization of prostitution increases human trafficking inflows.

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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Courant Research Centre PEG in its series Courant Research Centre: Poverty, Equity and Growth - Discussion Papers with number 96.

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Date of creation: 29 Sep 2011
Date of revision: 16 Jan 2012
Handle: RePEc:got:gotcrc:096

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Keywords: human trafficking; prostitution;

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References

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Citations

Blog mentions

As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
  1. Legal prostitution and human trafficking
    by Economic Logician in Economic Logic on 2012-08-08 13:35:00
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Cited by:
  1. Diego Hernandez & Alexandra Rudolph, 2011. "Modern Day Slavery: What Drives Human Trafficking in Europe?," Courant Research Centre: Poverty, Equity and Growth - Discussion Papers 97, Courant Research Centre PEG, revised 23 Nov 2011.
  2. Seo-Young Cho, 2012. "Human Trafficking, a Shadow of Migration: Evidence from Germany," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1246, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
  3. Seo-Young Cho, 2012. "Modeling for Determinants of Human Trafficking," Economics of Security Working Paper Series 70, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
  4. Hernandez, Diego & Rudolph, Alexandra, 2011. "Modern Day Slavery: What Drives Human Trafficking in Europe?," Proceedings of the German Development Economics Conference, Berlin 2011 83, Verein für Socialpolitik, Research Committee Development Economics.

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