Individualism and the legal status of prostitution

IF 2.8 2区 经济学 Q1 ECONOMICS
Lewis S. Davis , Astghik Mavisakalyan
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引用次数: 0

Abstract

We know very little about why the legal status of prostitution varies across countries. Drawing on central arguments in the normative literature on the legal status of prostitution, in which a central argument concerns the sexual and bodily autonomy of women, we ask whether a country's position on the individualism-collectivism affects the legal status of prostitution. We investigate this question using a panel of 61 countries, finding a robust positive relationship between individualism and the legality of prostitution. In the baseline model, a one-standard deviation increase in individualism is associated with a ten percentage point increase in the likelihood that prostitution is legal. This relationship is robust to controls for institutional structure, other dimensions of culture, and measures of women's economic status and historical patriarchy. It is also robust to the use of instrumental variable analysis to address issues of endogeneity and measurement error. Our results also shed light on two additional aspects of the normative debate over legal prostitution. In particular, we find that prostitution is more likely to be legal in countries in which women enjoy greater economic status, but we fail to find a consistent empirical relationship between historical patriarchy and legal prostitution.

个人主义与卖淫的法律地位
我们对各国卖淫的法律地位为何不同知之甚少。根据有关卖淫法律地位的规范性文献中的核心论点(其中一个核心论点涉及妇女的性自主和身体自主),我们询问一个国家在个人主义-集体主义上的立场是否会影响卖淫的法律地位。我们利用 61 个国家的面板研究了这一问题,发现个人主义与卖淫合法性之间存在稳健的正相关关系。在基线模型中,个人主义每增加一个标准差,卖淫合法化的可能性就会增加 10 个百分点。这种关系与制度结构、文化的其他维度以及妇女经济地位和历史上父权制的衡量标准等控制因素是稳健的。使用工具变量分析来解决内生性和测量误差的问题也是稳健的。我们的研究结果还揭示了有关合法卖淫的规范性辩论的另外两个方面。特别是,我们发现在妇女享有更高经济地位的国家,卖淫更有可能合法化,但我们未能发现历史父权制与合法卖淫之间存在一致的经验关系。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
4.40
自引率
0.00%
发文量
66
审稿时长
45 days
期刊介绍: The mission of the Journal of Comparative Economics is to lead the new orientations of research in comparative economics. Before 1989, the core of comparative economics was the comparison of economic systems with in particular the economic analysis of socialism in its different forms. In the last fifteen years, the main focus of interest of comparative economists has been the transition from socialism to capitalism.
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