The social costs of gun ownership

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Cook, PJ; Ludwig, J
• 署名单位: Duke University; National Bureau of Economic Research; Georgetown University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2005.02.003
• 发表日期: 2006
• 页码: 379-391
• 关键词: Regulation; Social costs; evaluation methods; externalities; gun violence

摘要

This paper provides new estimates of the effect of household gun prevalence oil 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 +0. 1 and +0.3. 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 $1800. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.