Calling on the hotline ...

The sad story of the Danish government's hotline for men "addicted" to buying sex.

Key bits:

Four ministry employees, working six-hour shifts, two days a week, received an average of 1.4 phone calls per shift. And a significant number of those callers hung-up or didn’t say a word.

The fact is that a lot of men like to buy sex – and they aren’t interested at all in the government’s programme to change that.

Approximately one in ten Danish men over the age of 18 bought sex at least once – often many times – in the last 12 months. Yet of the approximately 200,000 Danish men who bought sex from prostitutes last year, only one in one thousand called the Social Ministry’s hotline.

Moreover, a campaign the ministry ran in 2008 to inform men about human trafficking in Denmark seemed to result in slightly higher number of young Danish men going to prostitutes and massage clinics.

The social affairs minister, Benedikte Kiær, nevertheless, reported in a council meeting that the hotline was “working well”.

Putting aside the obvious waste of money, and the misleading informal performance evaluation by the social affairs minister, the reported fraction of men purchasing sex in Denmark is much higher than comparable numbers in the US. This likely reflects several factors. The first is simply reporting differences. Purchasing sexual services is legal in Denmark and so, presumably, survey respondents are more likely to truthfully report it conditional on having done so. Second, demand may be higher in Denmark as well, both because such purchases are legal (making it less risky both in the sense of law enforcement troubles and in the sense of being ripped off) and because Danes are a much less religious bunch than Americans, so that the average psychic cost is likely lower.

It would be interesting to write down a model of the implications of legal sex work for the marriage market. It should affect the set of marriages that form, the division of rents within marriage, sexual behavior within marriage as well as the duration of marriages.

Hat tip: Lars Skipper

Taxes, taxes, taxes

MSNBC on the joyous tax regime in Denmark.

Hat tip: Lars Skipper

Christiania

I am about two years behind on reading my dead-tree reason magazines, which is actually kind of interesting, especially in regard to political articles, because I know some of the future that the authors do not.

Last night I read this fine article about Christiania, the "free city" located on an old military base not far from downtown Copenhagen. The article does a good job of describing the place as I remember it from my own visit.

I hope it lives on. It really is a public good at this point, not just for the tourists it brings to the city but also for the example it provides of a different way of living. The government would be foolish and mean to shut it down. Indeed, I think they should work with the residents to reestablish the kinder, gentler pot market that existed a decade ago, before the government shut it down and let rougher folk come in to replace it in the shadows.

Banking on death

German bankers come to Denmark, looking to profit from the early deaths of Danes.

More calmly, they are looking to buy people's life insurance policies.

The article is interesting for several reasons, including the apparent success of the banks at overcoming the adverse selection problem in their home market in Germany.

The social democrat's idea that somehow this market caused the financial crisis is well, not so clever.

Perhaps the most astouding bit of the whole article is the news that the University of Copenhagen has among its faculty professors of theology. Who knew?

Hat tip: Lars Skipper

Danes getting the jump on an exciting new sport

Somehow I have completely missed this on my visits to Denmark.

Hat tip: Jessica Goldberg

Further evidence that Denmark is not the US

From a piece in the Copenhagen Post on the important role of sex positive guest lecturers (!) in Danish sex education courses:

There’s more to sex than anal sex and STDs. There’s pleasure, games and respect for your own and others’ boundaries. But students don’t know this as their parents don’t talk about sex. Teenagers are often abandoned to shy teachers’ scary pictures of unwanted pregnancies, the boasting of friends or to porn films,’ said sexologist Jenna Harragaard Christensen to Urban newspaper.

My (sex segregated) sex education class in junior high featured Al the physical education teacher lecturing about anatomy and VD. Oddly, I did much better in the course than the students who were actually having sex, which I was still years away from at the time. I would venture to say that we were all already pretty positive about sex even without a guest lecturer.

Hat tip: do you even have to ask?

8 Reasons Why God Hates Denmark?

Wow ... this guy is tough, going after Hans Christian Andersen, Legos, and Pippi Longstocking who, it turns out, is just part of a plot to make innocent girls "uppity".

More seriously, this sort of hate is just ignorant and sad.

Hat tip: Lars Skipper

Alert reader Daniel points out that the Landover Baptist Church is in fact a parody. I would add that it is a good one - it fooled me!

Addendum 2: several commenters point this out as well.

Firm specific workplace benefits

On the sad story of reduced on-the-job beer consumption at Carlsberg in Denmark.

From MSNBC and from the Copenhagen Post.

Key bits, from the MSNBC story:

Scores of Carlsberg workers walked off their jobs in protest Thursday after the Danish brewer tightened laid-back rules on workplace drinking and removed beer coolers from work sites, a company spokesman said.

The warehouse and production workers in Denmark are rebelling against the company's new alcohol policy, which allows them to drink beer only during lunch hours in the canteen. Previously, they could help themselves to beer throughout the day, from coolers placed around the work sites.

The only restriction was "that you could not be drunk at work. It was up to each and everyone to be responsible," company spokesman Jens Bekke said.

Hat tip: Lars Skipper

Cultural and political persistence

A modern report on what the English ambassador wrote about his stay in Denmark in the early 1690s.

My favorite bit:

"In Denmark there are no seditions, mutinies, or libels against the government, but all people are, or appear to be, lovers of their king, notwithstanding their ill-treatment, and the hardships they groan under. And I suppose one principal reason of this to be the equality of the taxes, and the manner of taxing. It is not to be imagined by those that see it not, what a comfort it is to the sufferers to be ill-used alike."

Denmark, like Sweden and Norway, remains remarkably homogeneous on many dimensions, including the politics. Or, at least, I perceive them as such in juxtaposition to the wildly heterogeneous US.

I can report, though, based on personal experience that the food has gotten better in the intervening centuries!

Hat tip: Lars Skipper

Denmark in the No Spin Zone

Bill O'Reilly and his two very blonde colleagues deconstruct Oprah's love of Denmark.

Best bits: O'Reilly on the Danish Vikings and his Irish ancestors and Margaret Hoover dissing O'Reilly on Aristotle

Worst bit: Margaret Hoover's outfit makes her look like a clown about to put on her makeup.

Oh, and just to be clear, the 90 percent replacement rate in the Danish unemployment insurance system does have a cap, so neither O'Reilly nor Oprah would get 90 percent of their salaries were they Danes who lost their jobs.

My take: the Danish equilibrium requires a lot of social cohesion, for which being a small, homogeneous country is probably a necessary but not sufficient condition.

Hat tip: no need to say

A sad day in Denmark

Truly sad news from Denmark, as the world's oldest porn shop is set to close, brought down not by internet porn but by some combination of increased bicycle use and the recession.

Key bits:

According to the shop owner, it’s the effect of the recession, increasing shop rents and bicycle lanes that have influenced the company’s financial downturn the most.

‘Customers can’t park anywhere since they built bike lanes everywhere and the effects of the recession can really be felt. You can’t skimp on milk and bread, but you can save on porn during times of crisis,’ he said.

Strauss has suggested that the National Museum might be interested in preserving part of the store, similar to when a display was created using a hash stand from Christiania.

‘They could easily display a couple of film booths. It’s an important part of Danish history that otherwise will end up in the rubbish bin.’

Perhaps they could apply to become some sort of UN World Heritage site?

Oh, and there really is a hash stand in the National Museum of Denmark - I've seen it with my own eyes. Christiania is a sort of semi-autonomous zone / 60s theme park in Copenhagen.

Hat tip: you know who

Pro-natalist policies and the downard sloping demand curve for babies

Denmark seems to have found a pro-natalist policy that actually works: fully subsidized IVF.

The latest figures from the country’s fertility databases show that 8 percent of children are born with help from fertility treatment or about 5000 a year. By comparison, 3.5 percent of Norwegian and 2 percent of English children are born as a result of the treatment.

Lone Schmidt, a fertility researcher at University of Copenhagen, said Denmark topped the European rates because of the many fertility clinics here. The clinics are also more accessible, with short waiting lists and have a high quality of treatment, she said.

‘Its got nothing to do with Danes having lower fertility than those in other countries,” Schmidt told Berlingske Tidende, adding it was free for Danish people to receive treatment, unlike in many other countries.

It would be interesting to see a comparison of fully subsidized IVF with some of the other tax and transfer based pro-natalist policies on a $ per baby basis. I suspect that the additional babies induced by IVF also end up in families with higher levels of education and income, which has implications for the social cost-benefit calculation.

That's a free paper idea, folks. Please send me a draft when it is done!

Hat tip: Lars Skipper

Update on Danish sex workers

No takers yet on the offer of free sex to climate convention delegates by a group of Danish sex workers, but lest you think that environmentalists are a bunch of sexless droids who can't dance, there is this bit:

There were a couple of Danes who wrote to ask if they could have free sex because they were members of Greenpeace – but that’s not on,” smiles Susanne Møller.

Darn that fine print!

Hat tip: you know who

The Economist goes to Copenhagen

I agree with their recommendation on the Nyhavn neighborhood. You can also catch boat rides there that take you around the harbor.

I really enjoyed the Danish National Museum. It is always interesting to see how countries present their culture and history to outsiders. Like most modern museums in Europe, the information is mostly in both the local language and in English making it quite accessible.

Do stop at Tivoli Gardens. One is tempted to call this an amusement park but it is more than that. Think Seattle Center but with gambling. Indeed, a stop at Tivoli on my high school student group tour of Europe was literally the first time I ever saw slot machines in person. My recollection from grade 11 is that they were crowded with little old ladies gambling away their pension checks. It is great fun just to walk and watch here, and reasonably good Danish food can be had.

By all means wander through Christiania as well. This 60s throwback is what Berkeley always wished it could be. Christiania is not, itself, all that it used to be. In the national museum they have an example of a pot-selling stand taken from Christiania's past, but even without the open air drug market it is still great counterculture fun that has not yet (though one can imagine it may at some pointed) jumped the shark into a 60s-theme tourist trap. Best not, though, to demand to be taken here straight from the airport as one economist, who shall remain nameless, did when visiting Denmark. Your gentle hosts will repeat the story forever after to the amusement of future guests.

If you are flush with money, the downtown Marriott, where I stayed at the expense of the much-abused Danish taxpayer while teaching a course, is quite nice.

Gropenhagen

The city government of Copenhagen is trying to get the climate delegates to focus on their work rather than on sex, or at least to focus on unpaid sex with each other or with horny enrviro-groupies rather than with Copenhagen's many sex workers.

The city council has contacted 160 hotels asking them not to arrange prostitutes for guests, reports Avisen.dk.

In collaboration with The Nest International – an anti-trafficking organisation – and tourist organisation Wonderful Copenhagen, postcards with the slogan ‘Be sustainable – don’t buy sex’ have been distributed to hotels as part of the campaign.

The prostitutes are fighting back by offering free sex to delegates.

Do remember that sex work is completely legal in Denmark.

Hat tip: not even worth saying.

Olympics

I have a very simple explanation as to why the Olympics went to Rio. My explanation relies on basic human desires.

Here is an article on Danish prostitutes flocking to Copenhagen for the meeting of the International Olympic committee.

Here is an article declaring the Rio the sexiest city on earth. Prostitution is legal there. Indeed, when I was in Rio for the Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association (LACEA) meetings the year that Heckman won the Nobel prize, I can remember watching (subtle, but obvious enough even when observing only sporadically while reading papers and drinking beer) transactions taking place in the bar of the upscale hotel at which the meetings were held.

In Chicago, on the other hand, the Cook County sheriff is busy (like so many other public officials looking for ways into the headlines without actually doing their jobs) suing Craigslist. Good to know that there are not any other crime problems in Cook County that might call for the Sheriff's attention.

Probably the reader can connect the dots from there.

As to the Obamas, they should not have been there if Chicago was not going to win, and whether or not Chicago was going to win is something that the administration should have known about in advance. This is not a big deal in the scheme of things, but it is not a signal of competence either.

Hat tip (on the Denmark piece): Lars Skipper

Miss Manners may have omitted this case

Is it good manners to text someone if you are government child welfare agent and are notifying a woman who is soon to give birth that you will be confiscating her child?

Does the answer depend on whether or not you have already tried to contact the person in person and by phone? Or on how much effort you put into trying to do so?

I am conflicted about this one. It seems inappropriate to send this information by text message, but at the same time how much taxpayer money should be spent trying to contact someone by other means who is avoiding contact?

Marketing Denmark

Imagine a government tourism agency that produces a fake viral video of an attractive women looking for the father of her new baby, the result of a drunken one night stand with a tourist whose name she does not even remember.

Implausible? Perhaps.

But also reality in (you guessed this already) Denmark. The video has been pulled from Youtube but you can watch it here and read the story. You will find some comments from VisitDenmark, the Danish government tourist agency, in this story. Best bit:

VisitDenmark disagrees.

”Karen’s story shows that Denmark is a broad-minded country where you can do what you want. The film is a good example of independent, dignified, Danish women who dare to make their own choices,” says VisitDenmark CEO Dorte Kiilerich.

Why have you chosen to market Denmark as a country with drunken women who have unsafe sex with casual acquaintances?

”That is not a story that I recognise. We tell a good and sweet story about a mature, responsible woman who lives in a free society and shoulders the responsibilty of her actions. And she uses a modern social medium,” Kiilerich says.

Hat tip: Lars Skipper

Wages and outsourcing

The write-up is a bit of a mess but this Danish study appears to conclude (with a sample size of four countries) that high wages do not lead to outsourcing. Or is it better management that seeks "out new markets, new production methods and new products."? Or are Danish workers more skilled and so more productive?

Correlation? Causation? Journalistic confusion? All of the above?

Sigh.

Hat tip (but you knew this already): Lars Skipper

Update on McDonald's in Denmark

From frequent hat tip recipient Lars Skipper, in response to a reader question:

Most of the 85 McD's in Denmark have been designed by my father (they do need architects when building them!). When he first started building them, there were talks about putting the soda machines in the public space but it was decided against this because of a tax on (any!) fizzy drinks (both diet products and regular carbonated water are subject to the tax as well) of $0.20 per liter. This tax is on top of a sugar tax of $5 per kilogram of (any type of) sugar in your product (and of course you pay a 25 % VAT of all the taxes also). And from January 1st 2010 the sugar tax also applies to sugar-free products such as candy, ice cream, and sodas!?! Anyway, the bottom line is that sodas are pretty expensive in Denmark: Your regular 8 fl oz Diet Coke costs between $2 and $4 dollars depending on where you buy it (discount markets the former and vending machines the latter).

BUT: At the moment 33 out of the 85 McDonalds Restaurants in Denmark have decided that the cost of having people waiting in line to be served at your restaurant is too high compared to the soda tax so they have decided to having their restaurants refit and have the soda-dispensers located inside the restaurant (there is an audit-controlled teller installed in the dispensers so the restaurant will have to pay tax on the amount of soda they dispense and not the number of cups they sell - no escape from the tax authority).

The amazing thing is that Denmark has any (above ground) economic activity at all.