Effect of Enforcement Shock on Pushers' Activities: Evidence from an Asian Drug-Selling Gang

Kaiwen Leong (), Huailu Li and Haibo Xu ()
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Kaiwen Leong: Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Haibo Xu: Tongji University

No 12083, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We study a Singaporean drug-selling gang's dataset and empirically find that the gang's pushers purchased larger quantities of drugs during periods of enforcement shocks caused by enforcement activities targeting the gang's drug supply chain. This counter-intuitive finding can be explained by the pushers' profit targeting behavior. Given that enforcement shocks increased the pushers' cost of drugs, pushers must compensate by purchasing more drugs to sell in order to reach their profit targets.

Keywords: crime; enforcement; labor supply (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J46 K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 50 pages
Date: 2019-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-law and nep-sea
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