Traded goods and services

Some examples of underground economic activities include:

Sexual exploitation and forced laboredit

Prostitution is illegal or highly regulated in many countries across the world. These places form a classic study of the underground economy, because of consistent high demand from customers, relatively high pay, but labor-intensive and low skilled work, which attracts a continual supply of workers. While prostitution exists in every country, studies show that it tends to flourish more in poorer countries, and in areas with large numbers of unattached men, such as around military bases. For instance, an empirical study showed that the supply of prostitutes rose abruptly in Denver and Minneapolis in 2008 when the Democratic and Republican National Conventions took place there.

Prostitutes in the black market generally operate with some degree of secrecy, sometimes negotiating prices and activities through codewords and subtle gestures. In countries such as Germany or the Netherlands, where prostitution is legal but regulated, illegal prostitutes exist whose services are offered cheaper without regard for the legal requirements or procedures—health checks, standards of accommodation, and so on.

In other countries, such as Nicaragua, where legal prostitution is regulated, hotels may require both parties to identify themselves, to prevent the rise of child prostitution.

Personal informationedit

Personally identifying information, financial information like credit card and bank account information, and medical data is bought and sold, mostly in darknet markets. People increase the value of the stolen data by aggregating it with publicly available data, and sell it again for a profit, increasing the damage that can be done to the people whose data was stolen.

Illegal drugsedit

From the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many countries began to ban the keeping or using of some recreational drugs, such as the United States' war on drugs. Many people nonetheless continue to use illegal drugs, and a black market exists to supply them. Despite law enforcement efforts to intercept them, demand remains high, providing a large profit motive for organized criminal groups to keep drugs supplied. The United Nations has reported that the retail market value of illegal drugs is US$321.6 billion.

Although law enforcement agencies intercept a fraction of the illegal drugs, and incarcerate hundreds of thousands of wholesale and retail sellers, the very stable demand for such drugs and the high profit margins encourages new distributors to enter the market without a decrease in the retail price. Many drug legalization activists draw parallels between the illegal drug trade and the Prohibition of alcohol in the United States in the 1920s.

Weaponsedit

The legislatures of many countries forbid or restrict the personal ownership of weapons. These restrictions can range from small knives to firearms, either altogether or by classification (e.g. caliber, handguns, automatic weapons, and explosives). The black market supplies the demands for weaponry that can not be obtained legally, or may only be obtained legally after obtaining permits and paying fees. This may be by smuggling the arms from countries where they were bought legally or stolen, or by stealing from arms manufacturers within the country itself, using insiders. In cases where the underground economy is unable to smuggle firearms, they can also satisfy requests by gunsmithing their own firearms. Those who may buy this way include criminals to use for illegal activities, gun collectors, and otherwise law-abiding citizens interested in protecting their dwellings, families or businesses.

In England and Wales, certain categories of weapons used for hunting may be owned by qualified residents but must be registered with the local police force and kept within a locked cabinet. Another segment of the population who may purchase weapons on the black market are individuals who are unable to pass the legal requirements for registration—convicted felons or those suffering from mental illness for example. In a few jurisdictions, collectors may legally keep antique weapons made incapable of being readily restored to a firing condition.

Illegally logged timberedit

The illegal logging of timber has posed as an issue. According to Interpol, the illegal logging industry is worth almost as much as drug production industry, in some countries.

Animals and animal productsedit

In many developing countries, living animals are captured in the wild and sold as pets. Wild animals are also hunted and killed for their meat, hide, and organs, the latter of which and other animal parts are sold for use in traditional medicine.

In several of the states within the United States, laws requiring the pasteurization of milk has created black market situations involving the transport and sale of raw milk, and sometimes raw milk cheese which is legal in a number of EU countries but banned in the US if aged less than 60 days

Alcoholedit

Rum-running, or bootlegging, is the illegal business of transporting (smuggling) alcoholic beverages where such transportation is forbidden by law. Smuggling is usually done to circumvent taxation or prohibition laws within a particular jurisdiction. The term rum-running is more commonly applied to smuggling over water; bootlegging is applied to smuggling over land. According to the PBS documentary Prohibition, the term "bootlegging" was popularized when thousands of city dwellers would sell liquor from flasks they kept in their boot leg all across major cities and rural areas. The term "rum-running" most likely originated at the start of Prohibition in the United States (1920–1933), when ships from Bimini in the western Bahamas transported cheap Caribbean rum to Florida speakeasies. But rum's cheapness made it a low-profit item for the rum-runners, and they soon moved on to smuggling Canadian whisky, French champagne, and English gin to major cities like New York City and Boston, where prices ran high. It was said that some ships carried $200,000 in contraband in a single run.

Tobaccoedit

It has been reported that smuggling one truckload of cigarettes from a low-tax US state to a high-tax state can lead to a profit of up to $2 million. The low-tax states are generally the major tobacco producers, and have come under enormous criticism for their reluctance to increase taxes. North Carolina eventually agreed to raise its taxes from 5 cents to 35 cents per pack of 20 cigarettes, although this remains far below the national average. But South Carolina has so far refused to follow suit and raise taxes from seven cents per pack (the lowest in the USA).

In the UK, it has been reported that "27% of cigarettes and 68% of roll your own tobacco is purchased on the black market".

Biological organsedit

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), illegal organ trade occurs when organs are removed from the body for the purpose of commercial transactions. The WHO justifies its stance on the issue by stating, "Payment for ... organs is likely to take unfair advantage of the poorest and most vulnerable groups, undermines altruistic donation and leads to profiteering and human trafficking." Despite these ordinances, it was estimated that 5% of all organ recipients engaged in commercial organ transplant in 2005. Research indicates that illegal organ trade is on the rise, with a recent report by Global Financial Integrity estimating that the illegal organ trade generates profits between $600 million and $1.2 billion per year with a span over many countries.

Racketeeringedit

A racket is a service that is fraudulently offered to solve a problem, such as for a problem that does not actually exist, that will not be put into effect, or that would not otherwise exist if the racket did not exist. Conducting a racket is racketeering. Particularly, the potential problem may be caused by the same party that offers to solve it, although that fact may be concealed, with the specific intent to engender continual patronage for this party. An archetype is the protection racket, wherein a person or group (e.g., a criminal gang) indicates to a store owner that they could protect her/his store from potential damage, damage that the same person or group would otherwise inflict, while the correlation of threat and protection may be more or less deniably veiled, distinguishing it from the more direct act of extortion. Racketeering is often associated with organized crime, and the term was coined by the Employers' Association of Chicago in June 1927 in a statement about the influence of organized crime in the Teamsters union.

Transportation providersedit

Where taxicabs, buses, and other transportation providers are strictly regulated or monopolized by government, a black market typically flourishes to provide transportation to poorly served or overpriced communities. In the United States, some cities restrict entry to the taxicab market with a medallion system, i.e., taxicabs must get a special license and display it on a medallion in the vehicle. In most such jurisdictions it is legal to sell the medallions, but the limited supply and resulting high prices of medallions have led to a market in unlicensed carpooling/illegal taxicab operation. In Baltimore, Maryland, for example, it is not uncommon for private individuals to provide illegal taxicab service for city residents.

Housing rentaledit

In places where there is rent control there may be a black market for housing. For instance, in the UK there is illegal subletting of social housing homes where the tenant illegally rents out the home at a higher rent. In Sweden, rental contracts with regulated rent can be bought on the black market, either from the current tenant or sometimes directly from the property owner. Specialised black-market dealers assist the property owners with such transactions. In India, places like Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Kolkotta and New Delhi, where students are coming from all over India, getting high rented paying guests or other forms of rented apartments without any taxation or regulations.

Counterfeit medicine, essential aircraft and automobile partsedit

Medicines and essential aircraft and automobile parts (e.g. brakes, motor parts, etc.) are counterfeited on a large scale.

Copyrighted mediaedit

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Street vendors in countries where there is little enforcement of copyright law, particularly in Asia and Latin America, often sell deeply discounted copies of films, music CDs, and computer software such as video games, sometimes even before the official release of the title. A determined counterfeiter with a few hundred dollars can make copies that are digitally identical to an original and face no loss in quality; innovations in consumer DVD and CD writers and the widespread availability of cracks on the Internet for most forms of copy protection technology make this cheap and easy to do.

Copyright-holders and other proponents of copyright laws have found this phenomenon hard to stop through the courts, as the operations are distributed and widespread,citation needed transversing national borders and thus legal systems. Since digital information can be duplicated repeatedly with no loss of quality, and passed on electronically at little to no cost, the effective underground market value of media is zero, differentiating it from nearly all other forms of underground economic activity. The issue is compounded by widespread indifference to enforcing copyright law, both with governments and the public at large. To steal a car is seen as a crime in most people's eyes, but to obtain unauthorized copies of music or a game is not. Additionally, not all people agree with 'copyright laws', as it unfairly criminalises competition, allowing the copyright-holder to effectively monopolise related industries. It also authorises copyright-holders to use region-coding to discriminate against selected populations price-wise and availability-wise.

The comparison to car-theft, although common, is not truly analogous. Automobile theft results in an item being removed from the owner with the ownership transferred to a second party. Media piracy is a crime of duplication, with no physical property being stolen. Copyright infringement law goes as far as to deem illegal "mixtapes" and other such material copied to tape or disk. Copyright holders typically attest the act of theft to be in the profits forgone to the pirates. However, this makes the unsubstantiated assumption that the pirates would have bought the copyrighted material if it had not been available through file sharing or other means. Copyright holders also say that they did some work for creating their copyrighted material and they wish to get compensated for their work. No other system than copyright has been found to compensate the artists and other creators for their work,citation needed and many artists do not have any alternative source of income or another job. Many artists and film producers have accepted the role of piracy in media distribution. The spread of material through file sharing is a major source of publicity for artists and has been shown to build fan bases that may be more inclined to see the performer live (live performances make up the bulk of successful artists' revenues, however not all artists can make live performances, for example photographers typically only have a single source of income that is the licensing of their photos).

Currencyedit

Money itself is traded on the black market. This may happen for one or more of several reasons:

• The government sets ("pegs") the local currency at some arbitrary level to another currency that does not reflect its true market value.
• A government makes it difficult or illegal for its citizens to own much or any foreign currency.
• The government taxes exchanging the local currency with other currencies, either in one direction or both (e.g. foreigners are taxed to buy local currency, or residents are taxed to buy foreign currency).
• The currency is counterfeit.
• The currency has been acquired illegally and needs to be laundered before the money can be used.

A government may officially set the rate of exchange of its currency with that of other currencies, typically the US dollar. When it does, the peg often overvalues the local currency relative to what its market value would be if it were a floating currency. Those in possession of the "harder" currency, for example expatriate workers, may be able to use the black market to buy the local currency at better exchange rates than they can get officially.

In situations of financial instability and inflation, citizens may substitute a foreign currency for the local currency. The U.S. dollar is viewed as a relatively stable and safe currency and is often used abroad as a second currency. In 2012, $340 billion, roughly 37 percent of all U.S. currency, was believed to be circulating abroad. The most recent study of the amount of currency held overseas suggests that only 25 percent of U.S. currency is presently held abroad. The widespread substitution of U.S. currency for local currency is known as de facto dollarisation, and has been observed in transition countries such as Cambodia and in some Latin American countries. Some countries, such as Ecuador, abandoned their local currency and now use US dollars, essentially for this reason, a process known as de jure dollarization. See also the example of the Ghanaian cedi from the 1970s and 1980s.

If foreign currency is difficult or illegal for local citizens to acquire, they will pay a premium to acquire it. U.S. currency is viewed as a relatively stable store of value and since it does not leave a paper trail,dubious – discuss it is also a convenient medium of exchange for both illegal transactions and for unreported income both in the U.S and abroad.

More recently cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin have been used as medium of exchange in black market transactions. Cryptocurrencies are sometimes favored over centralized currency due to their anonymous nature and their ability to be traded over the internet.

Fueledit

In the EU, it is not illegal for a person or business to buy fuel in one EU state for their own use in another, but as with other goods the tax will generally be payable by the final customer at the physical place of making the purchase.citation needed

Between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, there has often been a black market in petrol and diesel. The direction of smuggling can change depending on the variation of the taxes and the exchange rate between the Euro and Pound Sterling; indeed sometimes diesel will be smuggled in one direction and petrol the other.citation needed

In some countries, diesel fuel for agricultural vehicles or domestic use is taxed at a much lower rate than that for other vehicles. This is known as dyed fuel, because a coloured dye is added so it can be detected if used in other vehicles (e.g. a red dye in the UK, a green dye in Ireland). Nevertheless, the saving is attractive enough to make a black market in agricultural diesel. In 2007 it was estimated that £350 million was not gained in profit as a result of this phenomenon, in the UK.

In countries like India and Nepal, the price of fuel is set by the government, and it is illegal to sell the fuel over the set price. Due to the petrol crisis in Nepal, black marketing in fuel has been a common trend, especially during mass petrol shortage. At times, people need to queue for hours or even sometimes overnight to get the fuel. On the other hand, the petrol pump operators are alleged to hoarding the fuel, and selling it to black marketers. Black marketing in vehicle/cooking fuel became widespread during the 2015 economic blockade imposed on Nepal. Even after the economic blockade was eased, and petrol imports resumed, people are not getting the fuel as they were supposed to and are resort to buying from the black market.

Sex toysedit

There are some countries where sex toys are illegal, such as Saudi Arabia, Thailand and India. The illegality has omitted certain clearing processes such as safety testing when they are sold by undercover independent vendors on the black market. Other black market platforms used to sell sex toys on the black market include consumer-to-consumer online auction websites, as well as private pages on social media websites. In black market venues in Cambodia, sex toys have been seized alongside aphrodisiac products. Some analysts have argued that if efforts in North America to ban realistic-looking sexbots succeed, it may result in a black market trade in sexbots.