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The social costs of gun ownership: a reply to Hayo, Neumeier, and Westphal

Author

Listed:
  • Philip J. Cook

    (Duke University
    NBER)

  • Jens Ludwig

    (NBER
    University of Chicago)

Abstract

We respond to the new article by Hayo, Neumeier, and Westphal (HNW), which is a critique of our 2006 article. The principal contribution of that article was to use a greatly improved proxy for gun prevalence to estimate the effect of gun prevalence on homicide rates. While the best available, our proxy, the ratio of firearms suicides to total suicides in a jurisdiction (FSS), is subject to measurement error which limits its use to larger jurisdictions that have enough suicides to stabilize the ratio. In this response, we report estimates for four different specifications and two data sets, the 200-county data and the data for the 50 states. We develop the claim that measurement error in FSS helps explain the observed pattern of results. Adopting the assumption that FSS follows a binomial process with a number of trials equal to the number of suicides, we characterize the relationship between measurement error and size of the jurisdiction, and thereby justify our conclusion that restricting the estimation to large jurisdictions reduces measurement error in FSS and hence the attenuation bias in the key coefficient estimate. We conclude that for the county-level data, the measurement error in FSS is of greater concern than using a specification that is flexible with respect to population. HNW focus on the latter but at the cost of increasing the effects of the former. We then demonstrate that the state-level data provide a robust case that more guns lead to more homicides.

Suggested Citation

  • Philip J. Cook & Jens Ludwig, 2019. "The social costs of gun ownership: a reply to Hayo, Neumeier, and Westphal," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 56(1), pages 13-22, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:empeco:v:56:y:2019:i:1:d:10.1007_s00181-018-1497-5
    DOI: 10.1007/s00181-018-1497-5
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ludwig, J. & Cook, P.J. & Smith, T.W., 1998. "The gender gap in reporting household gun ownership," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 88(11), pages 1715-1718.
    2. Raphael, Steven & Winter-Ember, Rudolf, 2001. "Identifying the Effect of Unemployment on Crime," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 44(1), pages 259-283, April.
    3. John J. Donohue III & Steven D. Levitt, 2001. "The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 116(2), pages 379-420.
    4. Cook, Philip J. & Ludwig, Jens, 2006. "The social costs of gun ownership," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(1-2), pages 379-391, January.
    5. Steven D. Levitt, 1996. "The Effect of Prison Population Size on Crime Rates: Evidence from Prison Overcrowding Litigation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 111(2), pages 319-351.
    6. Levitt, Steven D, 1997. "Using Electoral Cycles in Police Hiring to Estimate the Effect of Police on Crime," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(3), pages 270-290, June.
    7. Mark Duggan, 2001. "More Guns, More Crime," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 109(5), pages 1086-1114, October.
    8. E. Han Kim & Adair Morse & Luigi Zingales, 2006. "What Has Mattered to Economics Since 1970," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 20(4), pages 189-202, Fall.
    9. Justin McCrary, 2002. "Using Electoral Cycles in Police Hiring to Estimate the Effect of Police on Crime: Comment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(4), pages 1236-1243, September.
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    Cited by:

    1. Chalak, Karim & Kim, Daniel & Miller, Megan & Pepper, John, 2022. "Reexamining the evidence on gun ownership and homicide using proxy measures of ownership," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 208(C).
    2. Wm. Alan Bartley & Geoffrey Fain Williams, 2022. "The role of gun supply in 1980s and 1990s youth violence," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 40(2), pages 323-348, April.
    3. John J. Donohue, 2022. "The Effect of Permissive Gun Laws on Crime," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 704(1), pages 92-117, November.
    4. Jessica Jumee Kim & Kenneth C. Wilbur, 2022. "Proxies for legal firearm prevalence," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 20(3), pages 239-273, September.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Measurement error; Crime; Guns; Homicide; Panel regression;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C23 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Models with Panel Data; Spatio-temporal Models
    • C43 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods: Special Topics - - - Index Numbers and Aggregation
    • K42 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law

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