Speaker: 孙雅洁 (Yajie Sun)

Title: Road to Crime: Expressway Connections and Child Trafficking

Schedule: April 6, TH 1:30-3:00 PM

Location: 诚明楼（Chengming Hall） RM 315 

 

Introduction: 南京审计大学经济与金融研究院助理教授，博士毕业于新加坡国立大学。研究领域为城市经济学、房地产经济、应用微观经济学等。研究成果发表于China Economic Review, Real Estate Economics, 管理世界等。

 

Abstract: Child trafficking is a long-lasting social issue in China. We argue that abducted children increase as an indirect and unintended consequence of improved urban infrastructure, such as the construction of expressways that facilitate the expedient transfer of victims between cities. To identify the causal relationship, we combine family-reported incidents of child abduction with geo-referenced data of China’s highway routes to explore the impact of expressways on connected cities in comparison to unconnected cities using a difference-in-differences approach and city-pair matching strategy. The results support our assumptions and are robust after addressing the concerns regarding the endogeneity of route placement and staggered treatment timing. The expanded demand side of the trafficking market and enhanced rural-urban migration, which increases the public safety risks, could account for the mechanism behind the phenomena.