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The Economic Returns to Good Looks and Risky Sex in the Bangladesh Commercial Sex Market

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  • Asadul Islam
  • Russell Smyth

Abstract

This study examines the economic returns to beauty and unprotected sex in the commercial sex market in Bangladesh. The results show that there is a beauty premium for commercial sex work, but it is within the bounds of the economic returns to beauty for women in occupations that do not involve sex work. We find that there is an earnings premium for sex workers who sell unprotected sex and that more attractive sex workers charge a higher premium for unprotected sex. This result is consistent with either attractive sex workers having more bargaining/negotiating power or attractiveness and risky sex being complements for males in the presence of attractive women. The results are robust to a number of empirical specifications including controls for sex workers’ disposition, client characteristics and a number of fixed effects to control for other attributes of sex workers and their clients.

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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Monash University, Department of Economics in its series Monash Economics Working Papers with number 41-10.

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Length: 40 pages
Date of creation: May 2010
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:mos:moswps:2010-41

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  1. Marina Della Giusta & Maria Laura Di Tommaso & Steinar Strøm, 2005. "Who’s watching? The market for prostitution services," CHILD Working Papers wp16_05, CHILD - Centre for Household, Income, Labour and Demographic economics - ITALY.
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