Human Trafficking and Regulating Prostitution

Samuel Lee and Petra Persson
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Samuel Lee: New York University, Postal: Stern School of Business

No 996, Working Paper Series from Research Institute of Industrial Economics

Abstract: We study sex trafficking in a marriage market model of prostitution. When traffickers can coerce women to sell sex, trafficked prostitutes constitute a non-zero share of supply in any unregulated market for sex. We ask if regulation can eradicate trafficking and restore the equilibrium that would arise in an unregulated market without traffickers. While all existing approaches – criminalization of prostitutes (“the traditional model”), licensed prostitution (“the Dutch model”), and criminalization of johns (“the Swedish model”) – fail to accomplish this goal, we show that there exists an alternative regulatory model that does. Political support for regulation hinges on the level of gender income inequality.

Keywords: Prostitution; Trafficking; Contemporary slavery; Marriage; Illegal goods (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D10 J16 J47 J49 K14 K23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 38 pages
Date: 2013-12-13
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-law, nep-lma and nep-mic
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:0996

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