New Publication at the International Review of Law & Economics: Estimating the effect of concealed carry laws on murder and other violent crimes

Our new analysis paper is out there to learn right here.

Summary

In 2021 we wrote a brief paper noting that truncating the pattern when estimating the impact of proper to hold legal guidelines on crime could possibly be biased by comparisons to states that already adopted the legislation, as an alternative of states with out the legislation. In 2023 Bondy et al. criticized our paper however inaccurately described what we did and supplied selective outcomes. Extra importantly, they missed the purpose of our evaluation, specifically that making use of two-way fastened results to a truncated pattern, say 1991-2018, biases the ensuing RTC coefficient by invalidly evaluating newly handled states to 11 beforehand handled states. The bias is so giant that even when the true coefficient on the right-to-carry dummy is adverse, the estimated coefficient could possibly be constructive. These biased outcomes might be corrected by utilizing new DID estimators, that don’t make invalid comparisons, and that are strong to time and state heterogeneity. Utilizing these new estimators, we discover that RTC legal guidelines don’t considerably enhance complete violent crime or any of its parts, homicide, rape, theft or assault. We discover proof that RTC legal guidelines considerably scale back homicide and that constitutional carry legal guidelines considerably scale back rape.

Carl Moody and John R. Lott, “Estimating the impact of hid carry legal guidelines on homicide: A response to Bondy, et al,” Worldwide Overview of Regulation & Economics, 80 (2024).