Abstract
The market for sex is a contentious one, and has often been subject to heavy regulation. This chapter goes through factors that are important with regards to the demand for and supply of prostitution. A particular focus is on the relationship between laws and the quantity of sex bought and sold. The most common way that laws have been used to affect the demand for prostitution is by outright criminalization, which may lead to less prostitution, but may also drive the activity further underground. The effect of criminalizing prostitution on trafficking is ambiguous since criminalization may also lead to a substitution effect towards more trafficked prostitutes. Scarcity of reliable data is one of the main challenges for the study of prostitution.
References
Arunachalam R, Shah M (2008) Prostitutes and brides? Am Econ Rev 98(2):516–522
Cho S-Y, Dreher A, Neumayer E (2013) Does legalized prostitution increase human trafficking? World Dev 41:67–82
Cunningham S, Kendall TD (2011) Prostitution 2.0: the changing face of sex work. J Urban Econ 69(3):273–287
Della Giusta M (2010) Simulating the impact of regulation changes on the market for prostitution services. Eur J Law Econ 29(1):1–14
Della Giusta M, Di Tommaso ML, Shima I, Strøm S (2009a) What money buys: clients of street sex workers in the us. Appl Econ 41(18):2261–2277
Della Giusta M, Di Tommaso ML, Strøm S (2009b) Who is watching? the market for prostitution services. J Popul Econ 22(2):501–516
Di Tommaso ML, Shima I, Strøm S, Bettio F (2009) As bad as it gets: well-being deprivation of sexually exploited trafficked women. Eur J Polit Econ 25(2):143–162
Edlund L, Korn E (2002) A theory of prostitution. J Polit Econ 110(1):181–214
Jakobsson N, Kotsadam A (2011) Do laws affect attitudes? an assessment of the norwegian prostitution law using longitudinal data. Int Rev Law Econ 31(2):103–115
Jakobsson N, Kotsadam A (2012) Shame on you, john! laws, stigmatization, and the demand for sex. Eur J Law Econ 37(3):1–12
Jakobsson N, Kotsadam A (2013) The law and economics of international sex slavery: prostitution laws and trafficking for sexual exploitation. Eur J Law Econ 35(1):87–107
Lee S, Persson P (2013) Human trafficking and regulating prostitution. New York University School of Law, Law & economics research paper series, working paper no. 12–08
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this entry
Cite this entry
Hernæs, Ø., Jakobsson, N., Kotsadam, A. (2014). Prostitution, Demand and Supply of. In: Backhaus, J. (eds) Encyclopedia of Law and Economics. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7883-6_39-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7883-6_39-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-7883-6
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Economics and FinanceReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences