Deborah Lipp

On Feministing I found a link to an interesting and highly readable article discussing the economics of prostitution. The author (mathematics professor John Allen Paulos) suggests that prostitutes are relatively well-paid to compensate from the economic loss of marriage prospects (because marriage economically benefits women). 

I think this model is very limited, because what prostitutes lose is not simply, or primarily, the opportunity to marry, but the opportunity to be respectable. I think this is an important distinction, because in some cultures, only married women are respectable, but in cultures where it is respectable to be single, respectability; reputation, is still an economic advantage. » Read more..