Tim Worstall sostiene que los chulos son en general un intermediario que beneficia a las prostitutas.
A pimp isn't, contrary to what many believe, someone who holds a prostitute captive and steals whatever pitiful amount of cash she manages to earn by degrading herself. The relationship between the two is, rather, an economic one and a voluntary one at that. One which, like all voluntary exchanges, benefits both parties to it.
Esta descripción de Worstall probablemente necesita de más matices. Parece como si los chulos que abusan de las prostitutas o que forman parte de la organización que las retiene en contra de su voluntad no existieran, y existen. Pero Worstall tiene razón en que el chulo per se no es una figura criminal y que las medidas destinadas a quitarlos de las calles pueden en última instancia perjudicar a las propias prostitutas. Los economistas Steven Levitt y Sudhir Alladi Venktash sugieren esa conclusión en un estudio empírico sobre la prostitución en la calle (pdf).
In Roseland, there are no pimps and women solicit customers from the street. Just a few blocks away in Pullman, all women work with pimps who locate customers and set-up tricks, so that the prostitutes rarely solicit on street corners. Under the pimp model, there are fewer transactions, but the prices charged are substantially higher and the clientele is different. Prostitutes who work with pimps appear to earn more, and are less likely to be arrested. It appears that the pimps choose to pay efficiency wages. Consistent with this hypothesis, many of the women who do not work with pimps are eager to work with pimps, and indeed we observe a few switches in that direction over the course of the sample. Pimps are limited by their ability to find customers, however, so they operate on a small scale.
