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The Social Costs of Gun Ownership

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Author Info
Phillip J. Cook
Jens Ludwig
Abstract

This paper provides new estimates of the effect of household gun prevalence on homicide rates, and infers the marginal external cost of handgun ownership. The estimates utilize a superior proxy for gun prevalence, the percentage of suicides committed with a gun, which we validate. Using county- and state-level panels for 20 years, we estimate the elasticity of homicide with respect to gun prevalence as between +.1 and +.3. All of the effect of gun prevalence is on gun homicide rates. Under certain reasonable assumptions, the average annual marginal social cost of household gun ownership is in the range $100 to $600.

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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 10736.

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Date of creation: Sep 2004
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:10736

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H21 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Efficiency; Optimal Taxation
I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health

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References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
  1. Mark Duggan, 2000. "More Guns, More Crime," NBER Working Papers 7967, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  2. Jens Ludwig & Philip J. Cook, 1999. "The Benefits of Reducing Gun Violence: Evidence from Contingent-Valuation Survey Data," NBER Working Papers 7166, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  3. Joseph G. Altonji & Todd E. Elder & Christopher R. Taber, 2000. "Selection on Observed and Unobserved Variables: Assessing the Effectiveness of Catholic Schools," NBER Working Papers 7831, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  4. Marianne Bertrand & Esther Duflo & Sendhil Mullainathan, 2002. "How Much Should We Trust Differences-in-Differences Estimates?," NBER Working Papers 8841, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  5. Morgan Kelly, 2000. "Inequality And Crime," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 82(4), pages 530-539, November. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  6. Philip J. Cook & James A. Leitzel, 2002. ""Smart" Guns: A Technological Fix For Regulating The Secondary Market," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 20(1), pages 38-49, 01. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  7. Steven D. Levitt & Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh, 2000. "An Economic Analysis Of A Drug-Selling Gang'S Finances," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 115(3), pages 755-789, August. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  8. Gary Solon, 1984. "Estimating Autocorrelations in Fixed-Effects Models," NBER Technical Working Papers 0032, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  9. Deborah Azrael & Philip J. Cook & Matthew Miller, 2001. "State and Local Prevalence of Firearms Ownership: Measurement, Structure, and Trends," NBER Working Papers 8570, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  10. Joseph G. Altonji & Todd E. Elder & Christopher R. Taber, 2002. "An Evaluation of Instrumental Variable Strategies for Estimating the Effects of Catholic Schools," NBER Working Papers 9358, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  11. Glaeser, Edward L & Glendon, Spencer, 1998. "Who Owns Guns? Criminals, Victims, and the Culture of Violence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(2), pages 458-62, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  12. Philip J. Cook & John H. Laub, 2001. "After the Epidemic: Recent Trends in Youth Violence in the United States," NBER Working Papers 8571, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  1. Kovandzic, Tomislav & Schaffer, Mark & Kleck, Gary, 2008. "Estimating the Causal Effect of Gun Prevalence on Homicide Rates: A Local Average Treatment Effect Approach," IZA Discussion Papers 3589, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA). [Downloadable!]
  2. Mark Duggan & Randi Hjalmarsson & Brian A. Jacob, 2008. "The Effect of Gun Shows on Gun-Related Deaths: Evidence from California and Texas," NBER Working Papers 14371, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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