For the next six years until legislators corrected their error, the oldest profession was not a crime in Rhode Island — and public health and public safety substantially improved as a result, according to a new working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research. The statewide incidence of gonorrhea among women declined by 39 percent, and […]
In a new paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research, economists Scott Cunningham and Manisha Shah look at the six years when residents knew prostitution in Rhode Island wasn’t a crime. And they show evidence that Rhode Island’s decriminalization caused a steep decline in both forcible rape offenses and the incidence of gonorrhea.
A loophole in Rhode Island law that effectively decriminalized indoor prostitution in 2003 also led to significant decreases in rape and gonorrhea in the state, according to a new analysis published by the National Bureau of Economic Research. “The results suggest that decriminalization could have potentially large social benefits for the population at large – not […]
Being a soldier is risky; so is being a drug dealer or prostitute. The difficulty, evidently, is to disentangle the health risk and the financial reward from all the other motivations to choose a particular way of life. That isn’t easy, but economists try. World Bank economist Paul Gertler, Dr. Manisha Shah, and their colleagues […]
In a study of Mexican prostitution, economists showed that when a client requested sex without a condom, a prostitute was typically paid a 24 percent premium over her standard fee.
