The social costs of gun ownership
By: Philip J. Cook, Jens Ludwig.
Contributors: Ludwig, Jens.; National Bureau of Economic Research.
Series: NBER working paper series ;; working paper 10736; Working paper series (National Bureau of Economic Research : Online) ;; working paper no. 10736.
Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research
Published: 2004
Place of publication: Cambridge, MA
Language: eng
Format: Electronic resource
Subjects: Firearms ownership.; Gun control.; Violent crimes.
Description: "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"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references.
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Mode of access: World Wide Web.