Are there positive externalities from consuming pornography?
The most difficult requirement in studying the existence of externalities (positive or negative) to the consumption of pornography is finding some random variation in access to, exposure to, or temptation towards using pornography. Two recent economics papers, one a working paper, and one a published paper, claim to have found such variation. The first, by Todd Kendall, formerly an assistant professor at Clemson University, uses variation in state internet usage over time to proxy for variation in the “price” of accessing pornography. His first claim is that there exist unobservable reasons why residents in some states had an easier time adopting the internet than those in other states; that these reasons are unrelated to the outcomes that Kendall considers; and that, once a handful of other related variables are controlled for, the remaining variation we see in the speed of internet adoption across states is largely attributable to these reasons. His second claim is that this variatio
