  Luminosity is an intrinsic property of radio pulsars related to the
properties of the magnetospheric plasma and the beam geometry, and inversely
proportional to the observing frequency. In traditional models, luminosity has
been considered as a function of the spin parameters of pulsars. On the other
hand, parameter independent models like power law and lognormal have been also
used to fit the observed luminosities. Some of the older studies on pulsar
luminosities neglected observational biases, but all of the recent studies
tried to model observational effects as accurately as possible. Luminosities of
pulsars in globular clusters and in the Galactic disk have been studied
separately. Older studies concluded that these two categories of pulsars have
different luminosity distributions, but the most recent study concluded that
those are the same. This article reviews all significant works on pulsar
luminosities and discusses open questions.
