Humanitarian Action under Market Pressure

This paper examines how firms trade off commercial objectives against humanitarian obligations. Using 1.1 billion ship positions, we study responses to 1,395 distress alerts during the Mediterranean migration crisis. Event-study estimates show that commercial ships are about 90% less likely than equally distant NGO vessels to render assistance within the first five hours. Opportunity costs determined by load and trip destination shape merchant-vessel responses, suggesting competitive pressures suppress prosocial conduct. At the route level, traffic on affected corridors falls by 14% over the subsequent year, consistent with re-routing to reduce expected rescue exposure and, in turn, shifting global trade flows.