May 2000 - Prostitution is often called the world's oldest profession, yet economists almost never study it. The practice of safe sex by commercial sex workers is considered central to preventing the transmission of AIDS in developing countries - yet sex workers in Calcutta who regularly use...

The authors use 1993-94 and 1999-2000 India Employment and Unemployment surveys to investigate wage differentials between the public and private sectors as well as workers' decisions to join a particular sector. To obtain robust estimates of the wage differential, they apply three econometric...