McCully Brett A
Collegio Carlo Alberto, Piazza Vincenzo Arbarello 8, Torino, 10122, TO, Italy.
J Int Econ. 2024 Nov;152. doi: 10.1016/j.jinteco.2024.104016. Epub 2024 Oct 16.
Nearly $2 trillion of illegally trafficked goods flow across international borders every year, generating violence and other social costs along the way. Due to the absence of legal contracts and the challenge of finding trading partners in an illegal market, traffickers may rely on co-ethnic networks to facilitate trade. In this paper, I use novel microdata on the universe of large illegal drug confiscations in Spain to provide the first causal estimates of how immigrants and immigration policy affect the pattern and scale of illegal drug trafficking. I find that immigrants increase both illegal drugs imported from and exported to their origin country, with irregular immigrants raising illegal drug imports. Doubling the number of immigrants from an origin country raises the likelihood of illegal drug imports from that country by 8 percentage points. I find suggestive evidence that granting legal status to immigrants reduces illegal drug imports.
每年有近2万亿美元的非法贩运货物跨境流动，沿途引发暴力及其他社会成本。由于缺乏合法合同，且在非法市场寻找贸易伙伴存在挑战，贩运者可能依赖同族网络来推动贸易。在本文中，我利用西班牙大规模非法毒品没收情况的全新微观数据，首次对移民和移民政策如何影响非法毒品贩运的模式及规模进行了因果估计。我发现，移民既增加了从其原籍国进口的非法毒品，也增加了向其原籍国出口的非法毒品，非法移民则增加了非法毒品进口量。将来自某一原籍国的移民数量翻倍，会使从该国非法进口毒品的可能性提高8个百分点。我发现有暗示性证据表明，给予移民合法身份会减少非法毒品进口。
