Improved Reconstruction of International Drug Flow Networks

• In Event: Global Drug Markets, Trafficking Patterns, and Organized Crime

Abstract

Most illicit drug markets operate transnationally, with production, trafficking, and consumption spanning multiple and diverse countries worldwide. Mapping and estimating these international drug flow networks is therefore essential for identifying relevant trafficking routes and enhancing countermeasures. Although the available seizures and consumption data could provide a valuable proxy for these networks, such sources of information underestimate the scale of the international flows and are subject to substantial heterogeneity in terms of quality and reliability across countries. As such, the over-reliance of current methods on these data yields estimates of international drug flow networks that may be subject to substantial bias. We address this gap by designing a novel network reconstruction strategy that mitigates these data-quality issues through the inclusion of uniqueness, stability and non-negativity constraints that are known to regulate the formation of international drug flow networks. The potentials of this perspective are illustrated through the reconstruction of the international cocaine trafficking network, leveraging the Individual Drug Seizures (IDS) data from 2006 to 2017, collected by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). By offering an alternative methodological approach, the present study contributes to empirical research on illicit flow estimations and provides new avenues for future applications.

Authors

• Matei Gabriel Cosa, Bocconi University

• Caterina Paternoster, Bocconi University

• Daniele Durante, Bocconi University

• Omiros Papaspiliopoulos, Bocconi University