IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ucp/jlawec/doi10.1086-720583.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Do Prostitution Laws Affect Rape Rates? Evidence from Europe

Author

Listed:
  • Huasheng Gao
  • Vanya Petrova

Abstract

We identify a causal effect of the liberalization and prohibition of commercial sex on rape rates, using staggered legislative changes in European countries. Liberalizing prostitution leads to a significant decrease in rape rates, while prohibiting it leads to a significant increase. The results are stronger when rape is less severely underreported and when it is more difficult for men to obtain sex via marriage or partnership. We also provide the first evidence for the asymmetric effect of prostitution regulation on rape rates: the magnitude of prostitution prohibition is much larger than that of prostitution liberalization. Placebo tests show that prostitution laws have no impact on nonsexual crimes. Overall, our results indicate that prostitution is a substitute for sexual violence and that the recent global trend of prohibiting commercial sex (especially the Nordic model) could have the unforeseen consequence of proliferating sexual violence.

Suggested Citation

  • Huasheng Gao & Vanya Petrova, 2022. "Do Prostitution Laws Affect Rape Rates? Evidence from Europe," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 65(4), pages 753-789.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucp:jlawec:doi:10.1086/720583
    DOI: 10.1086/720583
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/720583
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/720583
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1086/720583?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Lingfu Kong & Emrah Sofuoğlu & Balogun Daud Ishola & Shujaat Abbas & Qingran Guo & Khurshid Khudoykulov, 2024. "Sustainable development through structural transformation: a pathway to economic, social, and environmental progress," Economic Change and Restructuring, Springer, vol. 57(2), pages 1-34, April.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ucp:jlawec:doi:10.1086/720583. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Journals Division (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JLE .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.