Banning the purchase of sex increases cases of rape: evidence from Sweden

Abstract

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This paper leverages the timing of a ban on the purchase of sex to assess its impact on rape offenses. Relying on Swedish high-frequency data from 1997 to 2014, I find that the ban increases the number of rapes by around 44–62%. The results are robust to several econometric specifications that exploit different identification assumptions. The increase reflects a boost in completed rapes both in the short- and long-run. However, it is not accompanied by a decrease in the number of pimps. Taken together, the empirical evidence hints at the notion that the rise in rapes is not connected to the supply of prostitution but rather to changes in the demand for prostitution due to the ban. The results here have the opposite sign but larger magnitudes in absolute value than results in the literature on the decriminalization of prostitution.