The Gravity of Tobacco Smuggling. Predicting Bilateral Illicit Cigarette Flows From Aggregate Data

Abstract

nternational tobacco smuggling remains an important concern for governments, tobacco manufactur-ers and health experts alike. While often linked to other forms of illegal activities, it also directly impacts govern-ment tax and health policies. Knowledge of factors that contribute to illicit tobacco trade and the existence of smug-gling routes is strongly hampered by the lack of reliable data on bilateral flows of illicit tobacco. Therefore, recon-structing the trafficking routes and estimating the size of cross-border illicit flows are crucial steps for gaining bet-ter understanding of these crimes and enforcing actions aimed at countering them. This study is the first to use grav-ity estimation techniques to decompose aggregate illicit cig-arette inflows for which data are available into their bilat-eral components. Our approach is a simple and effective method that can serve as a complement to other methods of pinpointing international trafficking flows such as empty discarded pack data or network analysis to help in the fight against illicit tobacco flows. Policymakers, customs officials as well as law enforcement can employ the presented meth-ods as an additional tool in the fight against illicit trade. Keywords: bilateral illicit cigarette trade, gravity model, predictive estimation