While, the number of employees in Croatia during the six years of recession shrank by 150,000, the legal branches of the 'vice industry' registered a rise of 5.6% in workers since 2008, thus increasing to 22,500 employees.
The authors of the research -- Zeljko Lovrincevic and Davor Mikulic, researchers at the Institute of Economics and Ante Orlovic , a lecturer at the Police Academy -- analysed official records regarding this topic collected from 2008 to 2012, and when it comes to illegal activities in the vice economy, they made their own estimates based on secondary sources of information and on their assumptions.
As for the legal segment of the 'vice economy', betting and gambling are fully legalised, and the researchers underline that offer and and availability of registered providers of those services could meet all the demands on the market.
According to official data, every second Croatia above the age of 15 is engaged in some sorts of lottery operations.
Gaming, alcohol and tobacco accounted for 7.3% of tax revenues, the researchers stress.
In 2012, the legal segment of the 'vice economy' contributed four billion kuna to Croatia's BDP, and in 2013, 7.3% of the collected tax revenues came from taxes in this segment.
Of a total of 22,400 employees in the legal segment of the 'vice economy', a half of them are employed in stores selling alcohol and cigarettes.
According to estimates of the three experts, Croatians annually spend 1.2 billion on illegal narcotics, and 1.2 billion kuna are estimated to pass through prostitution.
According to some estimates. there are 1,500 prostitutes, whose only source of income is commercial sex. In addition there are 2,500 'occasional prostitutes' who do no depend wholly on the proceeds of prostitution, and they, together with male prostitutes, realise the annual revenues of 1.2 billion kuna, according to the research.
Some 500 million kuna turns over in the illegal sale of tobacco and cigarettes, ant the turnover in the illegal sale of alcohol is lower by ten times.
(EUR 1 =HRK 7.6)