The Social Costs of Gun Ownership

Philip J Cook and Jens Ludwig

No 10736, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: 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.

JEL-codes: H21 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ure
Note: EH
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Published as Cook, Philip J. and Jens Ludwig. "The Social Costs Of Gun Ownership," Journal of Public Economics, 2006, v90(1-2,Jan), 379-391.

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Journal Article: The social costs of gun ownership (2006)
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