Does Legalized Prostitution Increase Human Trafficking?

Seo-Young Cho, Axel Dreher and Eric Neumayer

No 71, Economics of Security Working Paper Series from DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research

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 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 46 p.
Date: 2012
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mig
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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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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