Vortrag
Does Legalized Prostitution Increase Human Trafficking?

Seo-Young Cho, Axel Dreher, Eric Neumayer


29th Annual Conference of the European Association of Law and Economics (EALE)
Stockholm, Schweden, 20.09.2012 - 22.09.2012



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 legalized 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, countries where prostitution is legal experience larger reported human trafficking inflows.

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 legalized 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, countries where prostitution is legal experience larger reported human trafficking inflows.



Keywords: human trafficking, prostitution, legalization, scale effect, substitution effect, global
DIW-Link
Array

keyboard_arrow_up