1. Education

2. Academic Appointments

3. Publications
     The Love Market: What You Need to Know About How We Date, Mate and Marry / Dollars and Sex: How Economics Influences Sex and Love    Sexual Values and Fertility    Relationships and Marriages    Sexbot-Induced Social Change: An Economic Perspective (Book Chapter)  

4. Scholarship

5. Media Coverage
     TEDxVancouver    Dollars and Sex - Blog  

6. References

School of Public Policy, Simon Fraser University

Queen's University|alma_mater=Queen's University (M.A., Ph.D.)

Ester Boserup|honorific_suffix=}}

In 2015, Adshade gave a talk at TEDxVancouver on Economics and female sexual freedom which was originally titled "Your mother is not a whore."^[5][6][7] Adshade's blog Dollars and Sex was picked up by Big Think in 2010.^[8][9] Adshade is a columnist who has written several published articles. Adshade is a keynote speaker who has presented on several topics including A Sex Robot Future,^[5] Gender Equality Leadership, Sexual Harassment Leadership, Creating Cultures of Compassion, and Bartering Sex and Love.^[6]

Education

Adshade earned her B.A. Honours in Economics at York University in 1997.^[7] Adshade was awarded the Ontario Graduate Scholarship in 1999. She completed her M.A. in Economics in 2000 at Queen's University.^[7] Her thesis was titled Labour Migration and Cattle Accumulation: A Welfare Analysis of the Economy of Lesotho.^[7] In 2003, Adshade earned her Ph.D. in Economics at Queen’s University as a single mother of two.^[8][9] Her Ph.D thesis was on Female Labour Force Participation in an Era of Organizational and Technological Change.^[17]

Academic Appointments

Adshade started her teaching career as a Teaching Fellow at Queen's University in 2001. In 2003, she continued on at Queen's University as Adjunct Professor. Adshade held a post doctoral fellowship at the University of British Columbia and Queen's University from 2003 to 2004 as part of the Team for Advanced Research in Globalization, Education and Technology (TARGET). She joined Dalhousie University as Assistant Professor in 2004. In 2008, Adshade initiated a course titled Economics of Sex and Love at Dalhousie University.^[10] She also taught courses on Macroeconomics, Money and Banking and Long Run Growth in Historic Perspective. In 2012, she joined the Vancouver School of Economics at the University of British Columbia as Sessional Lecturer and since 2015 continues on as Lecturer where she teaches courses on Women in the Economy and Applied Economics.^[7] She has also taught courses on Economic Research, American Economic History, Economic Data and Principles of Microeconomics. In 2015, she joined Simon Fraser University as Adjunct Professor. Since 2016, she continues at the School of Public Policy at Simon Fraser University as LT Associate Professor with courses on Women and Policy.^[11] She has also taught courses on Policy Analysis and Quantitative Methods.

Publications

The Love Market: What You Need to Know About How We Date, Mate and Marry / Dollars and Sex: How Economics Influences Sex and Love

Adshade is the author of The Love Market: What You Need to Know About How We Date, Mate and Marry and Dollars and Sex: How Economics Influences Sex and Love.^[1][2][3]

Sexual Values and Fertility

Adshade seeks to explain the liberalization in our sexual values and its effects.^[1][2] She presents that the increased effectiveness of contraceptives decreased the probability of pregnancies thereby lowering the "probabilistic cost of promiscuity".^[1][2] She explains that since price and quantity demanded are inversely related, a decrease in the price of sex results in an increase in the quantity of sex demanded.^[1][2] More people having sex, she argues, has fuelled the destigmatization of premarital sex which increases the number of people having sex outside marriage.^[1][2] Adshade suggests that because this increase in instances of sex outweighs the lowered odds of pregnancy, the number of births to unmarried women has increased.^[1][2]

Adshade argues that a higher ratio of women in college tends to lower the price of sex.^[1][2] She presents that men on average have a greater preference for multiple partners.^[1][2] She also presents that women prefer being assured that the relationship with their partner is not limited to a single sexual event.^[1][2] She explains that the higher ratio of women would decrease their bargaining power in negotiations with their boyfriends, thereby increasing the instances of casual sex and decreasing traditional dating.^[1][2] Adshade observes that increasing the legal drinking age increases binge drinking resulting in increased promiscuity and instances of risky sex.^[1][2] She explains that increasing the cost of drinks would not help lower alcohol consumption in colleges because students have a price inelastic demand for alcohol.^[1][2] She presents that students discount costs by attributing it to future income.^[1][2] She indicates that the elasticity of demand for sex is related to the price of alcohol.^[1][2]

Adshade presents a paper by Melissa Kearney and Phillip Levine who attribute the observation that teenage sex and adolescent pregnancies have fallen while STDs have increased to an endogenous “culture of despair”.^[12][1][2] She explains that this culture develops among poorer families in societies with high income inequality.^[1][2] The families believe that because of their economic condition, college may not even be an option.^[1][2] She presents Benjamin Cowan and argues that making college more affordable would reduce the rate of teen pregnancy.^[13][1][2] Adshade observes that while teenagers are having less sex and are taking more precautions, teenage STD rates are increasing. She presents an argument by Steven Landsburg and suggests that when the opportunity cost of sex increases, risk averse teenagers exit the market.^[14][1][2] This, she explains, results in a greater proportion of those having sex being risk neutral and risk seeking which leaves a greater proportion of students exposed to the STDs.^[1][2]

Relationships and Marriages

Adshade observes that for a significant period in history, marriage could be explained by Gary Becker's model of a production market based relationship where partners seek to specialize in order to maximize output in terms of market goods and household goods.^[15][1][2] She explains that under the Becker model, the most efficient outcomes were realized when partners were as different from each other, allowing them to exercise their comparative advantage in either the workforce or the household.^[1][2] She suggests that the gender wage gap gave men the comparative advantage in the production of market goods, resulting in women having the comparative advantage in the production of household goods. She argues that Becker's model doesn't capture the essence of today's marriages which is rooted in consumption.^[1][2]

Adshade explains that consumer market based assortative mating is a key feature of today's relationships where people seek partners as similar to them as possible so that they can share experiences together.^[1][2] She advices that to increase the odds of matching with someone, one needs to price themselves accurately.^[1][2] She explains that matching is based on tradeoffs that one is willing to accept more so than a list of requirements that one seeks to check-off in a perfect mate. She presents that in certain cases being physically attractive with a lower income may be advantageous in so far as it signals sexual faithfulness.^[1][2] Adshade explains that since online dating promotes assortative mating, it has supported the class system where the earnings gap increases between the rich and the poor as the rich keep marrying the rich.^[1][2]

Adshade presents that relationships and marriages can be better understood under a model of negotiation where each party has a certain amount of bargaining power that determines the quality of the relationship for that party.^[1][2] She explains that as the similarity of men and women is better appreciated in the workforce, and as women are better educated on average than men, women gain more bargaining power in their marriage, thereby allowing for higher quality outcomes from shared decision making between husbands and wives.^[1][2]

Sexbot-Induced Social Change: An Economic Perspective (Book Chapter)

Adshade has written a chapter titled Sexbot-Induced Social Change: An Economic Perspective in Robot Sex: Social and Ethical Implications by John Danaher and Neil McArthur.^[4] Adshade seeks to predict how changes in sex robot technology would effect the evolution of the social structuring of marriages.^[4] Adshade presents that one of the reasons that people marry is because it is efficient in terms of the production of household goods including children.^[4] Adshade also observes that people marry because it provides partners with sex at a lower and much more accessible price.^[4] She explains that sex robot technology can be seen as a substitute to marital sex.^[4] This she argues will allow for people to find partners based on a holistic review of their features, rather than primarily on sexual attractiveness.^[4] With an argument rooted in Paul Samuelson's economic Le Châtelier's principle, she explains that sex robot technology would remove the constraint of sex from marriages potentially resulting in higher quality marriages.^[4]

Adshade predicts that in an era of sex robot prevalence, marriages will be devoid of an element of "sexual intimacy".^[4] She suggests that marriages will seek to be efficient and optimal in terms of production of household goods.^[4] She explains that through destigmatization, marriages will evolve to find some partners having extramarital sex with robots as well as other people, thereby reducing monogamy to a "preference rather than a social imposed constraint".^[4] Adshade suggests that marriages will not be limited to definitions imposed by the state as social change will give way to legislative change similar to the legalization of same-sex marriage.^[4] She explains marriages will be structured as relationships determined by optimality for the respective partners, and will not be constrained to seek social optimality.^[4] Adshade looks forward to seeing marriages take new, unforeseen forms.^[4]

Scholarship

• Female Labour Force Participation in an Era of Organizational and Technological Change.^[16]
• Technological and Organizational Change and the Employment of Women: Early Twentieth-Century Evidence from the Ohio Manufacturing Sector. - with Ian Keay^[17]
• The Rich are Different from the Rest of Us.^[18]
• The Origins of the Institution of Marriage. - with Brooks Kaiser (Working Paper)^[19]

Media Coverage

TEDxVancouver

In 2015, Adshade gave a talk at TEDxVancouver on Economics and female sexual freedom which was originally titled "Your mother is not a whore."^[20][21][22] Adshade accentuates the flaws in reasoning that come from advice to "not give it away" and the notion that men engage in sexual intercourse for pleasure while women do so for financial stability giving rise to the practice of slut-shaming.^[21] Adshade observes that the evolution of agriculture from the use of the hoe to the plough gave men a comparative advantage in production in the fields due to their upper-body strength which carried on through the Industrial Revolution.^[21] This, she adds, simultaneously gave women the comparative advantage in production of household goods and child rearing.^[21] She explains that women appeared to be uninterested in sex so as to signal their sexual faithfulness to their husbands as a means of survival.^[21] However, she argues, now as women are increasingly economically independent, the need for signalling is redundant.^[21] Adshade therefore advocates teaching future generations that the sexual needs of men and women are equally important.^[21]

Dollars and Sex - Blog

Adshade's blog Dollars and Sex was picked up by Big Think in 2010.^{[23][24][25][26]}

References