Sex Work Regulation and Sexually Transmitted Infections in Tijuana, Mexico

Abstract

While reducing the transmission of sexually transmitted infections is a common argument for regulating sex work, relatively little empirical evidence is available regarding the effectiveness of these policies. We investigate the effects of highly publicized sex work regulations introduced in 2005 in Tijuana, Mexico on the incidence of trichomoniasis. State-level, annual data for the 1995-2012 period are employed that include the incidence rates of trichomoniasis by age group and predictor variables. We find that the regulations led to a decrease in the incidence rate of trichomoniasis. Specifically, while our estimates are somewhat noisy, the all-ages incidence rate in the 2005-2012 period is roughly 37% lower than what is predicted by our synthetic control estimates and corresponds to approximately 800 fewer reported cases of trichomoniasis per year. We find that the decreases are especially pronounced for 15-24 and 25-44 age cohorts. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The cost of safe sex: estimating the price premium for unprotected sex during the Avahan HIV prevention programme in India

“…A major barrier to the development of safer sex work spaces is the current legal framework surrounding sex work, where working in indoor, organized settings is criminalized, including in southern India. Decriminalization of sex work is therefore crucial to address in order to support FSWs’ agency in insisting on condom use by clients (Quast and Gonzalez, 2016; Cunningham and Shah, 2017).…”

Universal health coverage at the macro level: Synthetic control evidence from Thailand

“…For each outcome variable we create a separate synthetic Thailand. This approach is similar to other studies that have used synthetic control methods with multiple outcomes (Quast and Gonzalez, 2016;Fletcher et al, 2015;Bohn et al, 2014;DeAngelo and Hansen, 2014;Bove and Elia, 2014). Since, the synthetic control method permits (i) matching on the pre-treatment outcome variable and (ii) on additional observed pre-treatment confounders specific to every outcome as well as (iii) matching one control group for all outcomes, we present two sets of estimates.…”

Substance Use Treatment Provider Behavior and Healthcare Reform: Evidence from Massachusetts

“…Since its initial application, the use of SCM has proliferated within the economics literature. More specifically, SCM has been utilized to estimate, for example, the effects of medical marijuana laws on body weight and opioid addiction (Sabia et al, 2017;Powell et al, 2015), soda taxation on diet and body weight (Fletcher et al, 2015), regulation of prostitution on sexually transmitted diseases (Quast and Gonzalez, 2016), effect of minimum wage increases on employment (Neumark et al, 2014), and immigration reform on labor market outcomes (Bohn et al, 2014). We next present an abridged description of the SCM approach tailored to our application.…”