I haven't read this, but I thought that list members might find it interesting.
If you do get a chance to read it, and have some thoughts on the methodology or the results, those should, I think, be much worth sharing with the list. (I suspect that it would be hard to say anything helpful about the piece until one reads it closely, which is why I have nothing to say.)
Eugene
"Guns, Drugs and Juvenile Crime: Evidence from a Panel of Siblings and Twins"
BY: NACI H. MOCAN
University of Colorado at Denver
Department of Economics
National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)
ERDAL TEKIN
Georgia State University
Department of Economics
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)
National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)
Document: Available from the SSRN Electronic Paper Collection:
http://papers.ssrn.com/paper.taf?abstract_id=473589
Other Electronic Document Delivery:
ftp://ftp.iza.org/dps/dp932.pdf
SSRN only offers technical support for papers
downloaded from the SSRN Electronic Paper Collection
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Paper ID: IZA Discussion Paper No. 932
Date: November 2003
Contact: ERDAL TEKIN
Email: Mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Postal: Georgia State University
Department of Economics
Andrew Young School of Policy Studies
University Plaza
Atlanta, GA 30303 UNITED STATES
Phone: 404-651-3968
Fax: 404-651-4985
Co-Auth: NACI H. MOCAN
Email: Mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Postal: University of Colorado at Denver
Department of Economics
P.O. Box 173364, Campus Box 181
Denver, CO 80217-3364 UNITED STATES
Paper Requests:
Contact: Mark Fallak, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Phone:+49-228-3894-0 ext. 223. Fax:+ 49-228-3894-510. Mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
ABSTRACT:
Using a nationally-representative panel data set of U.S. high school students (AddHealth data) that contains a relatively large sample of siblings and twins, the paper investigates the impacts of gun availability at home and individual drug use on robbery, burglary, theft and damaging property for juveniles. Using a variety of fixed-effects models that exploit variations over time and between siblings and twins, the results show that gun availability at home increases the propensity to commit crime by about two percentage points for juveniles but has no impact on damaging property. The results indicate that it is unlikely that gun availability is merely a measure of the unobserved home environment because gun availability does not influence other risky or bad behaviors of juveniles such as smoking, drinking and fighting, being expelled from school, lying, and having sex. No support is found for the hypothesis that gun availability decreases the propensity for being victimized. In fact, the results show that having access to guns increases the probability of being cut or stabbed by someone and of someone pulling a knife or gun on the juvenile. Estimates obtained from models that exploit variations over time and between siblings and twins indicate that drug use has a significant impact on the propensity to commit crime. We find that the median impact of cocaine use on the propensity to commit various types of crimes is 11 percentage points. The impact of using inhalants or other drugs is an increase in the propensity to commit crime by 7 and 6 percentage points, respectively.
JEL Classification: H0, K4, I12
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