Love and sex can be seen as a marketplace in which men and women have resources and assets that appeal to one another.

That's according to a recent study which likened the intricacies of romance to give-and-take trade. Women offer a resource — sex — that men desire, and in return, men come up with resources that women want.

Entitled Sexual Economics: A Research-Based Theory of Sexual Interactions, or Why the Man Buys Dinner, the study sets out to draw parallels between an economic marketplace and our romantic relationships. Study author, Roy Baumeister of Florida State University, looks at heterosexual relationships only and rests his theories on the premise that men want sex more than women do.  

The study throws another theory about supply and demand. The more gender equality there is, the more sex, he claims.

Using statistics from a survey measuring gender equality and sex in 37 countries, he found that the more freedom women had, the more sex citizens claimed to have. 

"In countries where women are at a big disadvantage, they restrain sex, so the price is high and men make a lifetime commitment to support them to get sex," explained Baumeister to USA Today.

Baumeister's theory has been met with firm opposition. Never has a price to be with a woman been higher than today, Tracy Clark-Flory of Salon.com points out.   

Slate.com’s Amanda Marcotte calls the idea of sexual economics, an utter failure. She argues that you’d have to prove that women are just not that into sex — an assumption that Baumeister makes, but does not prove.

Do you think Sexual Economics is onto something? Tell us in the comments section below.