TY  - JOUR
PY  - 2006//
TI  - The social costs of gun ownership
JO  - Journal of public economics
A1  - Cook, Philip J.
A1  - Ludwig, J.
SP  - 379
EP  - 391
VL  - 90
IS  - 1-2
N2  - 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 />
LA  - en
SN  - 0047-2727
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2005.02.003
ID  - ref1
ER  -