The Effects of Adult Entertainment Establishments on Sex Crime: Evidence from New York City

Riccardo Ciacci and María María
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Riccardo Ciacci: Universidad Pontificia Comillas
María María: Princeton University

Working Papers from Princeton University. Economics Department.

Abstract: This paper studies how the presence of adult entertainment establishments affects the incidence of sex crimes, including sexual abuse and rape. We build a high frequency daily and weekly panel that combines the exact location of not-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 crimes. The results imply that the reduction is mostly driven by potential sex offenders frequenting these establishments rather than committing crimes. We also rule out the possibility that other mechanisms are driving our results, such as an increase in the number of police officers, a reduction in the number of street prostitutes and a possible reduction in the number of potential victims in areas where these businesses opened. The effects are robust to using alternative measures of sex crimes.

Keywords: Sex crimes; rape; adult entertainment establishments; substitute services (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I18 J16 J47 K14 K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea, nep-law and nep-ure
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pri:econom:2020-44

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