Kiel Working Papers, Kiel Institute for World Economics
No 1480:
The Economic Drivers of Human Trafficking: Micro-Evidence from Five Eastern European Countries
Toman Omar Mahmoud and Christoph Trebesch
Abstract: Human trafficking is a humanitarian problem of global
scale, but quantitative research on the issue barely exists. This paper is
a first attempt to explore the economic drivers of human trafficking and
migrant exploitation using micro data. We argue that migration pressure
combined with informal migration patterns and incomplete information are
the key determinants of human trafficking. To test our argument, we use a
unique new dataset of 5513 households from Belarus, Bulgaria, Moldova,
Romania, and Ukraine. The main result is in line with our expectations:
Migrant families in high migration areas and with larger migrant networks
are much more likely to have a trafficked victim among their members. Our
results also indicate that illegal migration increases trafficking risks
and that awareness campaigns and a reduction of information asymmetries
might be an effective strategy to reduce the crime
Keywords: Human Trafficking, Migrant Exploitation, Illegal Migration, Migration Networks, Eastern Europe; (follow links to similar papers)
JEL-Codes: F22,; J61,; K42,; O17; (follow links to similar papers)
24 pages, February 2009
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