Marriage and the political economics of prostitution

http://the-idea-shop.com/papers/prostitution.pdf

Although this clearly does not cover all reasons why individuals may choose prostitution, particularly in a first world western society, it's an interesting model of why the pricing for prostitution remains such a large multiple of ordinary wages in any given country.

I find it interesting in the contexts of my earlier posts, such as Selling yourself, money vs. services and Girlfriends, better to rent or own?.

This paper was published in the Journal of Political Economics. One of the authors, Lena Edlund, has several other publications on the political economics of marriage.

(click on the title of this post to see the PDF)