Addressing child sex tourism: The Indian case

- We model an environment where children may be exposed to sex offenders.
- In theory either domestic or foreign child protection policies can shield children.
- Only the coordination of both sets of policies proves statistically significant.
- Improving coordination by one point reduces offences by 1.24.

The paper investigates policy options for a successful fight against child sex tourism in a context of increased human mobility inherent to the global economy era. Using state and district-level data on child-related crimes in India we find that international policy coordination is necessary. Coordination involves a combination of policies aimed at providing a safer environment for children by removing them from the streets (supply-side policies) with those intended to deal with child-related offences (demand-side policies). One-standard deviation increase in coordination efforts reduces the illegal importation of minor girls by 1.24 standard deviation.