The Economics of Mass Shootings

Abel Brodeur and Hasin Yousaf

No 12728, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We perform an empirical investigation of the socioeconomic determinants and consequences of all mass shootings in the U.S. from 2000 to 2015. We first manually search for and collect information on perpetrators. We find that approximately 40% (45%) of shooters were in financial distress (unemployed or out of the labor force) at the moment of the shooting, suggesting that economic distress may trigger rise in shooting. We then investigate the economic consequences of mass shootings. In order to obtain the causal effects of shootings, we exploit the inherent randomness in the success or failure of mass shootings. We find that, on average, successful mass shooting have economically significant negative effects on targeted counties' employment and earnings. As well, successful mass shootings decrease housing prices and consumer confidence and increase absenteeism. Last, we employ an instrumental variable strategy and show that national media coverage of mass shootings exacerbate their local economic consequences.

Keywords: mass shootings; employment; consumer confidence; absenteeism; media coverage (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C13 D74 P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 107 pages
Date: 2019-10
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Published - published online as 'On the Economic Consequences of Mass Shootings' in: Review of Economics and Statistics , 27 September 2022

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp12728.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp12728

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().