TY  - JOUR
AU  - Mocan,H. Naci
AU  - Tekin,Erdal
TI  - Guns, Drugs and Juvenile Crime: Evidence from a Panel of Siblings and Twins
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 9824
PY  - 2003
Y2  - July 2003
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w9824
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w9824.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Naci H. Mocan
Department of Economics
Louisiana State University
2119 Patrick F. Taylor Hall
Baton Rouge, LA 70803-6306
Tel: 225/578-4570
E-Mail: mocan@lsu.edu

Erdal Tekin
Department of Economics
Andrew Young School of Policy Studies
Georgia State University
P.O. Box 3992
Atlanta, GA 30302-3992
Tel: 404/413-0163
Fax: 404/413-0145
E-Mail: tekin@gsu.edu
AB  - 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, the results show that gun availability at home increases the propensity to committing robbery, burglary and theft by about two percentage points for juveniles but has no impact on damaging property. 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. 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 the median impact of cocaine use on the propensity to commit various types of crimes is 23 percentage points. The impact of using inhalants or other drugs is an increase in the propensity to commit crime by 14 and 18 percentage points, respectively.
ER  -