Sex Work Regulation Across 85 Nations: The Political Economy of Prostitution

Despite the popularity and efficacy of laws that criminalize consumers in the sex industry, adoption of such policies is slow and limited. In other cases, countries act to adopt legal frameworks that may leave sex workers unprotected from violence or harm. How do we explain such different choices across different countries? To address this, I undertake a political and economic view of sex work, which refers specifically to prostitution in this study, and subsequently investigate political and economic characteristics across 85 countries as factors that may affect their selection of different types of sex work policies. Furthermore, I examine the impact of diverse political value systems as well as economic conditions. The project employs a multinomial logistic regression model to examine the relationship between these factors and the adoption of five different sex work policies. The analysis of data demonstrated that total female participation in the labor force was the most influential factor, followed by civil liberties and political rights, across the countries included in the study.