“Price Formation of Illicit Drugs on Dark Web Marketplaces”, 2022-02-04 (; similar):
A large portion of the internet or world wide web is not indexed by search machines, this is called the deep web. A smaller portion of this deep web, only accessible using anonymization software (eg. Tor), is called the dark web. Websites in the deep-web and dark-web can only be directly accessed through their URL. The dark web is used for various pursuits, both legal—such as human rights activism—and illegal. The latter being the most prevalent, with content such as child pornography or the sharing of malicious services such as DDoS-tools. The focus of this research will be on another—and perhaps the most prevalent—part of the illegal activities on the dark web, namely drug trafficking.
In this research, the dark web’s illicit drug markets and their ‘offline’ counterparts will be compared. Specific differences between ‘offline’ and ‘online’ markets will be investigated and summarized along with other benefits and services the dark web might offer, next to this a price comparison will be made to finally examine whether these possible factors alter the price formation.
[Keywords: Dark web, illegal, drugs, services, price analysis, marketplaces]