@article{ref1,
title="The social costs of gun ownership",
journal="Journal of public economics",
year="2006",
author="Cook, Philip J. and Ludwig, J.",
volume="90",
number="1-2",
pages="379-391",
abstract="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.  Language: en<p />",
language="en",
issn="0047-2727",
doi="10.1016/j.jpubeco.2005.02.003",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2005.02.003"
}