convergence

Table 4. Impacts of Illegal Markets (billions of dollars)
Global Scale and Impact of Illicit Trade
Illegal Market Direct Impacts Indirect Impacts Total
Illegal Drugs
Human
Trafficking
Excised Goods
Environmental
Crimes
Counterfeits
Non-crime-related
economic cost for
the United States
normalized by its
contribution to the
global drug market
Global loss of one year
of quality life
Lost revenue to
government plus health
costs of illicit trade
Net present value of
total future losses in
ecosystem services
caused by one year of
environmental crimes
Counterfeit medications
in low-income countries,
value of statistical life
expenditure for
protection against
counterfeiting
208
83
41
498
Crime-related
economic cost for
the United States
normalized by its
contribution to the
global drug market
Revenue of human
traffickers multiplied
by the cost of crime
ratio
Revenue of
traffickers multiplied
by the cost of crime
ratio
Sum of market
estimates multiplied
by the cost of crime
ratio
308 516
48 128
37 78
75 568
213 Unknown 213
Total 1,043 468 1,501
Conclusion
After arguing the importance of developing a better estimate of the global scale and impact of
illicit trade, this chapter reviewed statistics on some of the major illegal markets, dissected the
way they were constructed, and highlighted some of their limitations. The review uncovered
different conceptual and empirical issues that must be addressed when defining, measuring,
and sampling illegal markets. This helped to prepare the ground for the more ambitious task
of developing a global estimate of illicit trade.
What is not properly defined cannot be measured. Most terms used to define the problem,
including transnational organized crime, illicit trade, and illicit or deviant globalization, lend
themselves to rather vague and open-ended definitions. We proposed a framework adapted
from Naylor’s theory of profit-driven crimes, in which different definitions or perceptions of
the problem can be compared. Illegal markets appear as the common denominator of these
different definitions, although we questioned the notion that being transnational is a key
defining characteristic.
We then focused on illegal markets and adopted UNODC’s direct/indirect classification
of impacts. Direct impacts correspond to the fundamental reasons why a given trade is being
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