HUMAN TRAFFICKING IN EUROPE. A quantitative study on the effect of convicted traffickers on trafficking victim inflow

Abstract

There are several indicators that supposedly influence the trafficking victim inflow in a country: the type of prostitution law, as researched by Jakobsson et al. (2013) and Cho et al. (2013), and additionally, according to previous literature, the degree of law enforcement also plays a role. In this thesis a quantative study will be conducted, with the aim to investigate whether the number of convictions has an effect on the number of trafficked victims within a country in Europe. The data will mainly be retrieved from the UNODC Country Profiles Reports and the model used is based on the models by Jakobsson et al, (2013) and Cho et al, (2013). Four different models are introduced, the first one being a replica of the models of Jakobsson et al. (2013) and Cho et al. (2013), the second model is the main model with several different additional variables, the third model includes the outlier France as a dummy variable and the fourth model introduces the interaction term SwedishModel*Convictions. The results of all the models are the same and show a contrast to the theory; a positive relation is found between convictions and trafficked victims, meaning that convictions lead to more trafficking inflow in a country.