Babies across Borders: The Political Economy of International Child Adoption * Forthcoming at International Studies Quarterly Asif Efrat Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya, Israel David Leblang University of Virginia Steven Liao University of Virginia Sonal S. Pandya University of Virginia Abstract This article sheds light on the determinants of international child adoption: a unique flow of migrants characterized by considerable transaction costs. We argue adoption flows are shaped in part by the prospective adoptive parents’ desire to reduce those costs and ensure a suc- cessfully completed adoption. Drawing on dyadic panel data over the period 1991-2010, we fit hurdle models to identify the impact of various influences that may make certain sending coun- tries (un)attractive for prospective parents. Our analysis reveals that a nationalist executive deters adoption; so does an international agreement whose safeguards—intended to ensure the integrity of adoption—might increase transaction costs. By contrast, a high regulatory quality, as well as familiarity with the sending country through colonial or migrant ties, increase that country’s appeal. Our analysis advances the understanding of the impact of transaction costs on transnational exchange and carries important implications for the study of migration and international law. * We thank the editors of ISQ and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. This study has benefited from funding provided by the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme. Peter Selman assisted with the collection of international-adoption data. Katherine Holcomb and Jacalyn Huband assisted with the parallel implementation of multiple imputation on University of Virginia’s cluster. Replication materials are available at http://thedata.harvard.edu/dvn/dv/sliao.
Babies across Borders: The Political Economy of International Child Adoption
Jul 09, 2023
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