 Illegal markets and contemporary slavery: Evidence from the mahogany trade in the AmazonDaniel Araujo, Yuri Barreto, Danny Castro and Robson Tigre Journal of Development Economics, 2024, vol. 166, issue C Abstract: Modern slavery is a major global concern, with an estimated 49.7 million people enslaved in 2022. This paper explores the impact of illegal markets on this phenomenon, focusing on the complete shutdown of the mahogany market in the late 90s in Brazil. Utilizing a quasi-experimental research design that exploits the natural variation in the occurrence of mahogany trees in Brazilian municipalities, we employ novel administrative data on labor inspections to assess the effects of this shutdown on modern slavery. Our results indicate that the mahogany market shutdown significantly increased the probability of labor inspections discovering slave labor in affected municipalities. The outcomes are not influenced by coordinated police efforts targeting locations following the alteration in the law. We validate our findings with several robustness exercises. Keywords: Modern slavery; Deforestation; Illegal markets (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:deveco:v:166:y:2024:i:c:s0304387823001335 DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2023.103177 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Development Economics is currently edited by M. R. Rosenzweig More articles in Journal of Development Economics from Elsevier |
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