Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery, by Siddharth Kara is now available in paperback. The book has been one of our most critically acclaimed and bestselling titles over the last couple of years. More important, the book and Kara’s application of economics to understand the persistent growth of sex trafficking throughout the world has furthered our understanding of the problem and the challenges in eradicating it.

In the preface, Kara describes the harsh economic realities of sex trafficking:

Approximately 1.2 million … [sex] slaves are young women and children, who were deceived, abducted, seduced, or sold by families to be prostituted across the globe. These sex slaves are forced to service hundreds, often thousands of men before they are discarded, forming the backbone of one of the most profitable illicit enterprises in the world. Drug trafficking generates greater dollar revenues, but trafficked women are far more profitable: Unlike a drug, a human female does not have to be grown, cultivated, distilled, or packaged. Unlike a drug, a human female can be used by the customer again and again.

Here’s a video in which Kara describes the book and analyzes the issue of sex trafficking: