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.