Posted by Jim Lindgren: John Lott and the National Research Council's Report.--
I was away when the story broke about the National Research Council releasing its report on the effects of gun laws on violence, though I saw [1]Stuart Benjamin's nice post on it when I returned. The focus of Stuart's comments were the report's criticisms of John Lott's work, though he also mentioned my role in [2]investigating whether a 1997 study that Lott says he did was ever actually done. As those of you who have been [3]following this might remember, [4]I thought that [5]Ayres and [6]Donohue did an excellent job of data analysis on the issue of the effect of carry laws on crime rates. I read through much of the report, including particularly [7]chapter 6 that is critical of Lott's work, the [8]dissent to part of that chapter by James Q. Wilson, and the [9]majority response to that dissent. From the portions that I have read, I found the report sober, impressive, and fair, though there are substantial parts of this literature that I am unfamiliar with. As to Lott's work, I actually thought that the Council's report was too generous to his work in spots. In particular, I thought that it failed to point out just how much Lott's results are driven by poorly executed demographic controls, a point that Ayres and Donohue make effectively in their Stanford exchange. While the Council's report raises a lot of questions about Lott's use of control variables in general, particularly in its [10]Appendix D, the Report does not seem to focus on the degree to these questionable demographic controls determine some of Lott's results. As usual, Tim Lambert has the [11]most thorough [12]coverage on the [13]report. References 1. http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2004_12_14.shtml#1103336454 2. http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~lambert/guns/lindgren.html 3. http://www.instapundit.com/archives/011591.php 4. http://www.instapundit.com/archives/011786.php#011786 5. http://islandia.law.yale.edu/ayers/Ayres_Donohue_article.pdf 6. http://islandia.law.yale.edu/ayers/Ayres_Donohue_comment.pdf 7. http://books.nap.edu/books/0309091241/html/120.html 8. http://books.nap.edu/books/0309091241/html/269.html 9. http://www.nap.edu/openbook/0309091241/html/269.html#pagetop 10. http://books.nap.edu/books/0309091241/html/299.html 11. http://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~lambert/cgi-bin/blog/2004/12#naspanel3 12. http://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~lambert/cgi-bin/blog/2004/12#naspanel2 13. http://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~lambert/cgi-bin/blog/2004/12#naspanel _______________________________________________ Volokh mailing list [email protected] http://highsorcery.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/volokh
