J-PAL affiliated professor Manisha Shah is an Associate Professor of Public Policy at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. Her primary research questions and teaching interests lie at the intersection of applied microeconomics, health, and education. How did you become interested in development economics? My childhood experiences in developing countries probably had a lot to do […]
You might laugh, but it happened in Rhode Island! My two guests, Dr. Manisha Shah and Dr. Scott Cunningham, did an extensive study on the results. It’s called “Decriminalizing Indoor Prostitution: Implications for Sexual Violence and Public Health.” What happened might surprise you!
A separate paper** on sex workers in Ecuador echoed some of these findings. As in Chicago, the paid-sex market in Ecuador is tiered, with licensed brothel workers earning more per hour than unlicensed street prostitutes. These gradations might reflect different tastes: brothel workers tend to be younger, more attractive and better educated. They are also slightly […]
What can public health learn from the time the state decriminalized prostitution?
At age 16, Manisha Shah went to the Andes Mountains of Ecuador — her first chance to dig into “real development work.” The task after a year of fundraising and training? Building latrines in rural communities. Soon after arrival, however, she realized that everyone there “already knew how” to build latrines. What they actually needed was financing […]
One surprising strategy for alleviating the lingering effects of trauma associated with natural disasters: insurance. In a study of “Risk-Taking Behavior in the Wake of Natural Disasters,” economists discovered that access to insurance increased Indonesian households’ willingness to adopt new technology, open a business, or otherwise invest in their future following natural disasters. (Earlier studies […]
Dozens of nations in recent years have implemented programs guaranteeing employment on public works projects – workfare – in an effort to reduce poverty. In Workfare and Human Capital Investment: Evidence from India (NBER Working Paper No. 21543), Manisha Shah and Bryce Millett Steinberg examine the impact on human capital investment of one of the world’s largest workfare programs, India’s National Rural […]
What would happen if prostitution were “decriminalized.” Rhode Island lawmakers did just that, from 1980 to 2009, inadvertently so. Responding to pressure from a group seeking to legalize prostitution, the legislature made prostitution a misdemeanor, but it also inadvertently removed language that made exchanging money for sex a crime if it took place indoors. The mistake […]
The stigma associated with selling sex remains strong, as is the stigma against buying it. This is despite the growing evidence that decriminalizing the buying and selling of sex has significant public health benefits. A pair of economists, Scott Cunningham and Manisha Shah, recently found that when Rhode Island accidentally decriminalized indoor prostitution due to […]
LISTEN15 MIN Back in 2003, Rhode Island lawmakers realized that they had inadvertently made indoor prostitution legal. It took them 6 years to decide what to do about it. What happened in the meantime was the subject of a study by researchers.
