Does Legalized Prostitution Increase Human Trafficking?

Seo-Young Cho, Axel Dreher and Eric Neumayer

No 96, Courant Research Centre: Poverty, Equity and Growth - Discussion Papers from Courant Research Centre PEG

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.

Keywords: human trafficking; prostitution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 K42 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-09-29, Revised 2012-01-16
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mig
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Does Legalized Prostitution Increase Human Trafficking? (2013)
Working Paper: Does Legalized Prostitution Increase Human Trafficking? (2012)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:got:gotcrc:096

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