Friday, March 2, 2012

How to regulate prostitution

While being the oldest profession, prostitution has always been a thorn in the eyes of authorities. The market clearly says it satisfies a demand, but it goes against some moral code. Banning it has never been an efficient solution, in particular because it leads to crime and adverse health outcomes. A better way may be to regulate it in some fashion, but how?

Giovanni Immordino and Francesco Flaviano Russo may have found how, and it involves the prohibition of buying sex, but no limit on selling it. Legalizing selling sex is interesting because it allows taxing it and makes it possible to reduce STD infection rates by applying health policies. What is striking it that the policy for prostitution is the exact opposite of the policy applies in some countries for illegal drugs: decriminalizing consumption and sometimes buying but criminalizing the sale. From what I could see, this seemed to work relatively well. While the tax aspect is the same as for prostitution, the health one is different. By making drug consumption legal, one has better access to consumer to apply health policies, while sellers are of little use in this respect (except when they cut the drug with more harmful material).

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is not original to the authors. In fact it is the law in Sweden and has received much attention since the law was passed in 1999: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_in_Sweden

mOOm said...

Yes, on Sweden. Here in Australia we just have legalized and somewhat regulated prostitution and we don't seem to have big problems with it. I really don't see why countries have such issues with it... The US is really weird. There paying people to make porn films seems to be totally legal while prostitution is banned everywhere but in some areas of Nevada. Both are paying for sex.

Vilfredo said...

Swiss authorities even reserve areas for prostitution, one to avoid this going on elsewhere, two to have a better grasp of the health situation.

Kansan said...

I do not think the authors are claiming they came up with this policy. They are just showing it is optimal.

Anonymous said...

If you tax buyers or if you tax sellers, the burden of the tax and the outcomes are the same.

Wouldn't this have the potential to function like a tax? That is, if you try to regulate one side of the market, why wouldn't the outcome be identical to having regulated the other side?