From University of Rochester economist Steven E. Landsburg, author of "Armchair Economist: Economics and Everyday Experience," a new article in today's Slate.com titled "How the Web Prevents Rape." Here are some excerpts:
"Does pornography breed rape? Quite the opposite, it seems.
What happens when more people view more of porn? The rise of the Internet offers a gigantic natural experiment. Better yet, because Internet usage caught on at different times in different states, it offers 50 natural experiments.
The bottom line on these experiments is, "More Net access, less rape." A 10 percent increase in Net access yields about a 7.3 percent decrease in reported rapes. States that adopted the Internet quickly saw the biggest declines. And, according to Clemson professor Todd Kendall, the effects remain even after you control for all of the obvious confounding variables, such as alcohol consumption, police presence, poverty and unemployment rates, population density, and so forth."
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