Comparative analysis of the opportunity cost of international drug trafficking and micro-trafficking in Ecuador

Abstract

Based on the premise that the decision to commit a crime is the product of weighing the expected benefits of committing the crime against the costs of committing it (economic model of crime), and that given that the expected economic expectations and the legal income foregone by those who are part of an international trafficking organization and those who are part of a micro-trafficking organization are different, then the increase in the opportunity cost (legal benefits foregone to commit a crime) should also have a different influence on the decision to commit a crime in the two segments. To test the above premise, based on data collected from the existing literature on the economic expectations of those who engage in drug trafficking in Ecuador, the opportunity cost between the two large segments of the Ecuadorian labor force employed in the illicit drug market (the international trafficking segment and the micro-trafficking segment) was compared in order to determine which segment is more likely to be persuaded to abandon or not enter the illicit drug market by raising the opportunity cost through increased licit profits.