Prof. Brooks to Speak at Macalester College: Come up and dinner's on me!

Professor Taggert Brooks, University of Wisconsin La Crosse will present
his paper “In Da Club: An Econometric Analysis of Strip Club Patrons” on Friday, November 16th at noon in Carnegie Hall, room C-304 at Macalester College in lovely St. Paul, MN.

This talk is also scheduled for presentation at the Allied Social Sciences
meetings (January 2008 in New Orleans) in a panel on the Economics of Paid Sex Markets, presided over by Alan Krueger (Princeton University), and along with other presenters including Steve Levitt (University of Chicago) and discussants including the up-and-coming hotshot, Emily Oster (University of Chicago).

ABSTRACT
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.