Behind the Green Door

Looks like I'm well behind the times. I guess one way to get students excited to take econ classes is to not only talk about porn but to show it.

Linda Williams, a film professor at Berkeley, lines up on the side of showing rather than simply telling. While researching feminist reactions to porn in the early '90s, she grew fascinated by the choreography of dirty movies and began teaching a trailblazing course about porno films. "I'm quite critical of pornography," she says.

In Da Club

My paper, entitled "In Da Club: An Econometric Analyis of Strip Club Patrons", is now available here.

Conservative estimates from the National Health and Social Life Survey (NHSLS) suggest 17 million Americans went to a club that featured nude or semi-nude dancers in 1991. Their attendance comprises nearly 67 million visits, 10 million more than the attendance at major league baseball games that year. A recent report by the Free Speech Coalition (2005), and recent testimony in front of the Ohio legislature by an industry advocate, Angelina Spencer, put the total revenues earned by strip clubs at 15 billion dollars a year (Smyth, 2005; Thompson, et. al., 2003). The industry arrived at this point following a doubling of the number of strip clubs between 1987 and 1992 according to Hanna (2005). Yet there has been no academic work covering this industry by economists.

In this paper I estimate a hurdle model using the NHSLS which is the first and only national probability based sample which asks people about their sexual behavior including if they have attended a strip club and the frequency of attendance. Using the hurdle model I test two popular theories which purport to explain the rapid increase in the number of clubs. I find that for those who reported changing their behavior in response to AIDS/HIV they were much more likely to go to a strip club and more frequent visitors than those who did not change their behavior. On the second explanation I fail to find support for the belief that attendance at strip clubs was motivated by the desire to escape the uncertain rules of a gender integrated work place. The rise of societal sensitivities to sexual harassment in the workplace does not appear to explain patron attendance at a strip club.

It is a very rough draft, more like some regressions and some random thoughts. Comments welcome.

Porn and Fashion

I've noted before that the porn industry does not treat new technology with the same disdain that Hollywood does. I've often thought one of the reasons is the difficulty they have in enforcing their copyrights. You have never seen a porn executive testifying in front of congress about the need to clamp down on illegal copying. And, other than this Perfect 10 idiot, and the occasional Playboy cease and desist letter, you never hear the industry complain about piracy. It should be noted these are both "soft core".

Maybe the porn industry is more like the fashion industry? Marginal Revolution has a nice post with some links on the problems of innovation and imitation in the fashion industry.

I really think the connection has to do with the nature of demand. Porn strikes me as something that experiences much shorter cycles of interest, then on to the next new thing. That's similar to fashion, but different than Hollywood. I'm sure there is something on the supply side as well. Hollywood is dominated by a few very profitable releases, whereas porn has many smaller profit releases.

Obviously I need to think about this much more.

Welcome Back

Welcome back Larry. We sure did miss you. I think the world is better served with you as an academic then with you as an administrator.

For those that haven't heard Larry Summers is resigning as President of Harvard and returning to his academic post. How long before he goes somewhere else? MIT? Berkeley? I can't imagine he'll want to hang around Harvard too long, unless he finds a nice home in women's studies.

Printer's Alley

It looks like Nashville's famous (or should I say infamous?) Printer's Alley has been the target of the moral conservatives. According to this article:

Wednesday night's agenda for the board listed nearly 200 entertainment permits. All those dancers were approved in the first wave of permits considered by the board. The permits issued represent the majority of adult performers in Metro. A lobbyist for the industry says many performers find the new system dehumanizing.

The 3-foot rule is being challenged by the operators of the very narrow Brass Stables. Club attorney George Barrett told News 2 that the Printer's Alley club will be in federal court on Tuesday to defend the practices of its entertainers. An employee of one of the dance clubs in Nashville told News 2 up to half their performers have left the business or left town since the new regulations were announced.

I would like to see the Supreme Court hear a challenge to buffer zones. I really think they'll find them unconstitutional. Although it has been found constitutional by the "liberal" 9th circuit in COLACURCIO v CITY OF KENT , so I'm definitely not too optimistic.

I mean only an idiot could think the whisper of "I Love You" into someone's ear carries the same meaning and same speech content as someone yelling it across a crowded bar. I wonder what the politicians would say if in the interest of public health they were prevented from holding babies and shaking hands during an election?

Listen up judges. The speech is intimacy, and there is no intimacy at a distance. And yes, I'm not talking about sex, I'm talking about intimacy.

Keywords: Stripping, Intimacy

The BBC

Reader SR should be hired by the BBC to vet their stories. Apparently you can watch foreign films in Bangladesh, as he points out in his blog here. I can only imagine that what the BBC calls a strict ban on foreign films is probably more along the lines of a small quota, which is why you can find some Hollywood films playing on the big screen in Bangladesh.

Covering the Labor Market

Brad DeLong is co-teaching a journalism class on reporting on the economy. In this entry he details the coverage labor market data.

Seven background graphs on employment statistics:
Payroll Survey
Employment Growth since 1994
Long-Term Unemployment
Unemployment and Underemployment
The Employment-to-Population Ratio
Thirty Years of the Unemployment Rate
Three Years of the Unemployment Rate
Unemployment:The Importance of Seasonal Adjustment

New claims for unemployment insurance emerge every Thursday...

Monthly Employment Report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics every month, at 8:30 AM on the first Friday: Statement by Commissioner of Labor Statistics Kathy Utgoff. The January 6, 2006 Employment Report itself.

Keywords: Unemployment, ECO120, ECO712