Modelling for Determinants of Human Trafficking

Social Inclusion 3 (Special Issue "Perspectives on Human Trafficking and Modern Forms of Slavery"): 2-21, 2015

168 Pages Posted: 26 Jul 2012 Last revised: 23 Jul 2016

See all articles by Seo-Young Cho

Seo-Young Cho

University of Marburg - School of Business & Economics

Date Written: July 15, 2015

Abstract

This study aims to identify robust push and pull factors of human trafficking. I test for the robustness of 70 push and 63 pull factors suggested in the literature. In doing so, I employ an extreme bound analysis, running more than two million regressions with all possible combinations of variables for up to 153 countries during the period of 1995–2010. My results show that crime prevalence robustly explains human trafficking both in destination and origin countries. Income level also has a robust impact, suggesting that the cause of human trafficking shares that of economic migration. Law enforcement matters more in origin countries than destination countries. Interestingly, a very low level of gender equality may have constraining effects on human trafficking outflow, possibly because gender discrimination limits female mobility that is necessary for the occurrence of human trafficking.

Keywords: human trafficking, push and pull factors, robustness, extreme bound analysis

JEL Classification: F22, J16, J61, O15

Suggested Citation

Cho, Seo-Young, Modelling for Determinants of Human Trafficking (July 15, 2015). Social Inclusion 3 (Special Issue "Perspectives on Human Trafficking and Modern Forms of Slavery"): 2-21, 2015, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2117838 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2117838

Seo-Young Cho (Contact Author)

University of Marburg - School of Business & Economics ( email )

Barfuessertor 2
Marburg, Hessen 35037
Germany

HOME PAGE: http://www.economics-human-trafficking.org/

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