Taxing Guns vs. Taxing Crime: An Application of the “Market for Offenses Model”

Isaac Ehrlich, Tetsuya Saito

NBER Working Paper No. 16009
Issued in May 2010
NBER Program(s):   HE   LE   PE

The interaction between offenders and potential victims has so far received relatively little attention in the literature on the economics of crime. The main objective of this paper is twofold: to extend the “market for offenses model” to deal with both “product” and “factor” markets, and to apply it to the case where guns are used for crime commission by offenders and for self-protection by potential victims. Our analysis offers new insights about the association between crime and guns and the limits it imposes on the efficacy of law enforcement and regulatory policies aimed to control both crime and guns.

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Published: Ehrlich, Isaac; Saito, Tetsuya. "Taxing Guns vs. Taxing Crime: An Application of the Market for Offenses Model", Journal of Policy Modeling, 32(5), September-October 2010, 670-89

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This paper was revised on December 5, 2011

Acknowledgments

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