Excerpts:

in contrast to their study, we use a global sample consisting of up to 150 countries.

Street prostitution differs from prostitution in brothels, bars and clubs, which also differs from prostitution offered by call girls (and boys) and escort agencies. Differences include, but are not limited to, the types of services rendered, numbers of clients served, types of clients served, sizes of payments, and also the share of illegally trafficked prostitutes working in each market segment. For simplicity, we will avoid such complications by assuming that there is one single market for prostitution.

One of the biggest challenges of doing research on human trafficking is the scarcity of reliable and comparable data. Human trafficking is a clandestine, criminal activity, with those being trafficked and involved in such activities being part of “hidden populations”

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They handwave off the results of some other study that found a decrease in human trafficking associated with legalization, they use the term legalization throughout the piece without defining it, I've already noted that legalization and decriminalization are not the same thing and are terms used sloppily or inconsistently by a lot of sources.

It isn't talking about human trafficking generally. It is talking specifically about moving people from one country to another. You can be trafficked in your own neighborhood by someone selling you to a pimp.

The conclusion of this study seems to be that legalization of prostitution in wealthy countries encourages people to bring in girls from less wealthy countries to pimp them.

This isn't exactly shocking and it's also got little to do with my point.

Everything I've seen suggests demand for prostitution goes up in uptight cultures, having nothing to do with whether it's legal or not. If you're a 1960s hippie and can get laid easily without paying for it, you don't pay for it. In the Victorian Era, you saw more prostitution because good girls were virgins until the wedding night.

People who end up doing sex work tend to be vulnerable populations escaping abusive relationships, etc. This is routinely used to criticize sex work and say it's a bad thing, but trying to stamp out sex work doesn't per se provide these people with some other means to support themselves.

Such solutions tend to disregard the larger context.

I'm all for improving women's rights, equality, etc. That's the ideal high-minded solution here such that no one needs to pay their bills this way.

But I don't see it as realistic to think that we can go from where we are today on this to no one needing to do objectionable but well-paid work by 6am tomorrow by simply criminalizing such labor.

The reality is that a lot of women marry well as a polite form of prostitution that's not illegal. And I think that's sometimes worse.

As long as we have a heteronormative society where men routinely out earn women, you are likely to see money changing hands related to sex. Pretending it isn't so doesn't actually make it go away.

Lol, so you're muddling the definitions of legalization, decriminalization, prostitution, human trafficking to argue your point. Good try I guess but pretty disgusting.