The Social Costs of Gun Ownership / Phillip J. Cook, Jens Ludwig.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cook, Phillip J.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Ludwig, Jens.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w10736.

NBER working paper series no. w10736

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2004.

Summary:

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.

Notes:

Print version record

September 2004.