This paper studies the hypothesis that marriage opportunities are an economic determinant of female prostitution. I exploit differences in the timing of entry into force of unilateral divorce laws across U.S. states to explore the effect of such laws on female prostitution (proxied by arrests of female prostitutes). Using a difference-indifference estimation approach, I find that unilateral divorce reduces prostitution by 10%. My results suggest that unilateral divorce improves the option value of marriage by increasing wives' welfare. As a result, the opportunity cost of becoming a female prostitute increases and the supply of prostitution declines.
In this paper we study how the presence of adult entertainment establishments affects the incidence of sex crimes. We build a high-frequency daily and weekly panel that combines the exact location of non-self-reported sex crimes with the day of opening and exact location of adult entertainment establishments in New York City. We find that these businesses decrease sex crime by 13% per police precinct one week after the opening, and have no effect on other types of crime. The results suggest that the reduction is mostly driven by potential sex offenders frequenting these establishments rather than committing crimes.
This study explores the effect of the expansion of mobile phone signal on migration decisions in Myanmar. The empirical strategy proposed follows Manacorda and Tesei (2019) and Andersen et al. (2011), it uses variation in lightning frequency across space as an instrumental variable for the expansion of mobile phone signal. Our results suggest that longer exposure to mobile phone network decreases migration. Specifically, an increase of 1 s.d. in the time exposed to mobile phone signal diminishes the probability of household members to migrate by 17%. We find empirical evidence suggesting that such findings are driven by the positive effects of access to mobile phone signal on labor market outcomes and on perceived well-being.
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