Economics, Sexuality, and Male Sex Work

Male sex work generates sales in excess of one billion dollars annually in the United States. Recent sex scandals involving prominent leaders and government shutdowns of escort websites have focused attention on this business, but despite the attention that comes when these scandals break, we know very little about how the market works. Economics, Sexuality, and Male Sex Work is the first economic analysis of male sex work. Competition, the role of information, pricing strategies and other economic features of male sex work are analyzed using the most comprehensive data available. Sex work is also social behavior, however, and this book shows how the social aspects of gay sexuality influence the economic properties of the market. Concepts like desire, masculinity and sexual stereotypes affect how sex workers compete for clients, who practices safer sex, and how sex workers present themselves to clients to differentiate them from the competition.

Introduction: economics, sexuality, and male sex work; Part I. The History and Economics of Male Sex Work: 1. Male sex work: antiquity to online; 2. Face value: how male sex workers overcome the problem of asymmetric information; 3. Market movers: travel, cities, and the network of male sex work; Part II. Male Sex Work and Sexuality: 4. Illicit intersections: the value of sex work services; 5. Show, tell, and sell: self-presentation in male sex work; 6. Service fees: masculinity, safer sex, and male sex work; Conclusion: every man a sex worker: commercial and non-commercial gay sexuality.

Trevon D. Logan is Hazel C. Youngberg Distinguished Professor of Economics at Ohio State University and Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He has won the American Sociological Association's Section on Sociology of Sexuality's Best Article Award. He is a member of the Committee on the Status of Minority Groups in the Economics Profession at the American Economic Association and member of the Executive Board of the North American Association of Sports Economists. He is a former president of the National Economic Association, was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholar in Health Policy Research at the University of Michigan, and former chair of the Economic History Association Committee on Data and Archives.