Zombie Economics! Rape and the Internet Again

The view that the easy availability of porn on the internet has contributed substantially to the recent decline in U.S. rape rates is making the rounds. It is based on a 2007 paper by Todd Kendall; so you might be interested in an old post of mine includes a swift critique of that paper and concludes that the results are inconclusive. That referred to an earlier (2006) version of the paper, and one can see that a lot of work went into the revision, but by and large it's still valid.

As for the more general point of the post, here's Kieran Healy saying the same thing (pdf, p. 124), so it must be true.