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Abstract:
Few events obtain the same instant worldwide news coverage as multiple victim public shootings. These crimes allow us to study the alternative methods used to kill a large number of people (e.g., shootings versus bombings), marginal deterrence and the severity of the crime, substitutability of penalties, private versus public methods of deterrence and incapacitation, and whether attacks produce copycats. Yet, economists have not studied this phenomenon. Our results are surprising and dramatic. While arrest or conviction rates and the death penalty reduce normal murder rates, our results find that the only policy factor to influence multiple victim public shootings is the passage of concealed handgun laws. We explain why public shootings are more sensitive than other violent crimes to concealed handguns, why the laws reduce both the number of shootings as well as their severity, and why other penalties like executions have differential deterrent effects depending upon the type of murder.

Abstract:
Few events obtain the same instant worldwide news coverage as multiple victim public shootings. These crimes allow us to study the alternative methods used to kill a large number of people (e.g., shootings versus bombings), marginal deterrence and the severity of the crime, substitutability of penalties, private versus public methods of deterrence and incapacitation, and whether attacks produce "copycats." The criminals who commit these crimes are also fairly unusual, recent evidence suggests that about half of these criminals have received a "formal diagnosis of mental illness, often schizophrenia." Yet, economists have not studied multiple victim shootings. Using data that extends until 1999 and includes the recent public school shootings, our results are surprising and dramatic. While arrest or conviction rates and the death penalty reduce "normal" murder rates and these attacks lead to new calls from more gun control, our results find that the only policy factor to have a consistently significant influence on multiple victim public shootings is the passage of concealed handgun laws. We explain why public shootings are more sensitive than other violent crimes to concealed handguns, why the laws reduce the number of shootings and have an even greater effect on their severity.

Abstract:
It is frequently assumed that safe storage gun laws reduce accidental gun deaths and total suicides, while the possible impact on crime rates are ignored. However, given existing work on the adverse impact of other safety laws, such as safety caps for storing medicine, even the very plausible assumption of reduced accidental gun deaths cannot be taken for granted. Our paper analyzes both state and county data spanning nearly twenty years. Because accidental shooters also tend to be the ones most likely to violate the new law, safe storage laws have no observable benefit in terms of reduced accidents or suicides. To the extent these storage requirements impair people's ability to use guns defensively they risk increasing violent and property crimes. During the first five full years after the passage of the safe storage laws, the group of fifteen states that adopted these laws faced an annual average increase of over 300 more murders, 3,860 more rapes, 24,650 more robberies, and over 25,000 more aggravated assaults. On average, the annual costs borne by victims averaged over $2.6 billion as a result of lost productivity, out-of-product expenses, medical bills, and property losses.

Abstract:
It is frequently assumed that safe storage gun laws reduce accidental gun deaths and total suicides, while the possible impact on crime rates are ignored. However, given existing work on the adverse impact of other safety laws, such as safety caps for storing medicine, even the very plausible assumption of reduced accidental gun deaths cannot be taken for granted. Our paper analyzes both state and county data spanning nearly twenty years, and we find no support that safe storage laws reduce either juvenile accidental gun deaths or suicides. Instead, these storage requirements appear to impair people?s ability to use guns defensively. Because accidental shooters also tend to be the ones most likely to violate the new law, safe storage laws increase violent and property crimes against low risk citizens with no observable offsetting benefit in terms of reduced accidents or suicides. During the first five full years after the passage of the safe storage laws, the group of fifteen states that adopted these laws faced an annual average increase of over 300 more murders, 3,860 more rapes, 24,650 more robberies, and over 25,000 more aggravated assaults. On average, the annual costs borne by victims averaged over $2.6 billion as a result of lost productivity, out-of-pocket expenses, medical bills, and property losses.

Abstract:
Governments use public education and public ownership of schools and the media to control the information that their citizens receive. More totalitarian governments as well as those with larger wealth transfers make greater investments in publicly controlled information. This finding is borne out from cross sectional time-series evidence across countries, and is confirmed when specifically examining the recent fall of communism. My results reject the standard public good's view linking education and democracy, and I find evidence that public educational expenditures vary in similar ways to government ownership of television stations.

Abstract:
Legalizing abortion can either increase or decrease investments in childrens human capital. This article finds that abortion increases the number of out-of-wedlock births. Using data that more directly links the criminal with age when the crime was committed, not age when arrested, and fixing the assumption in previous research that no abortions took place prior to the Roe v. Wade decision in the 45 states affected by that decision, we find consistent significant evidence that legalizing abortions increased murders by over 7%. Linear estimates indicate that legalization increased total annual victimization costs by at least $3.2 billion.

Abstract:
Abortion may prevent the birth of "unwanted" children, who would have relatively small investments in human capital and a higher probability of crime. On the other hand, some research suggests that legalizing abortion increases out-of-wedlock births and single parent families, which implies the opposite impact on investments in human capital and thus crime. The question is: what is the net impact? We find evidence that legalizing abortion increased murder rates by around about 0.5 to 7 percent. Previous estimates are shown to suffer from not directly linking the cohorts who are committing crime with whether they had been born before or after abortion was legal.

Abstract:
This paper examines the growth of government during this century as a result of giving women the right to vote. Using cross-sectional time-series data for 1870 to 1940, we examine state government expenditures and revenue as well as voting by U.S. House and Senate state delegations and the passage of a wide range of different state laws. Suffrage coincided with immediate increases in state government expenditures and revenue and more liberal voting patterns for federal representatives, and these effects continued growing over time as more women took advantage of the franchise. Contrary to many recent suggestions, the gender gap is not something that has arisen since the 1970s, and it helps explain why American government started growing when it did.

Abstract:
Accusations of political bias in the media are often made by members of both political parties, yet there have been few systematic studies of such bias to date. This paper develops an econometric technique to test for political bias in news reports that controls for the underlying character of the news reported. Our results suggest that American newspapers tend to give more positive news coverage to the same economic news when Democrats are in the Presidency than for Republicans. When all types of news are pooled into a single analysis, our results are highly significant. However, the results vary greatly depending upon which economic numbers are being reported. When GDP growth is reported, Republicans received between 16 and 24 percentage point fewer positive stories for the same economic numbers than Democrats. For durable goods for all newspapers, Republicans received between 15 and 25 percentage points fewer positive news stories than Democrats. For unemployment, the difference was between zero and 21 percentage points. Retail sales showed no difference. Among the Associated Press and the top 10 papers, the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Associated Press, and New York Times tend to be the least likely to report positive news during Republican administrations, while the Houston Chronicle slightly favors Republicans. Only one newspaper treated one Republican administration significantly more positively than the Clinton administration: the Los Angeles Times' headlines were most favorable to the Reagan administration, but it still favored Clinton over either Bush administration. We also find that the media coverage affects people's perceptions of the economy. Contrary to the typical impression that bad news sells, we find that good economic news generates more news coverage and that it is usually covered more prominently. We also present some evidence that media treats parties differently when they control both the presidency and the congress.

Abstract:
Will increasing the number of minority and women police officers make law enforcement more effective by drawing on abilities that have gone untapped and creating better contact with communities and victims? Or will standards have to be lowered too far before large numbers of minorities and women can be hired? Using cross-sectional time-series data for U.S. cities, I find that more black and minority police officers increase crime rates, but this apparently arises because lower hiring standards involved in recruiting more minority officers reduces the quality of both new minority and new nonminority officers. The most adverse effects of these hiring policies have occurred in the most heavily black populated areas. There is no consistent evidence that crime rates rise when more women are hired, and this raises questions about whether norming tests or altering their content to create equal pass rates is preferable. The paper examines how the changing composition of police departments affects such measures as the murder of and assaults against police officers.

Abstract:
Will increasing the number of minority and women police officers make law enforcement more effective by drawing on abilities that have gone untapped, or will standards have to be lowered too far before large numbers of minorities and women can be hired? Using cross-sectional time-series data for over 200 U.S. cities for 1987, 1990, and 1993, I find that increases in the percent of minority police officers increase crime rates, but this apparently arises because lower hiring standards involved in recruiting more minority officers reduces the quality of both new minority and new nonminority officers. The most adverse effects of these hiring policies have occurred in the most heavily black populated areas. There is no consistent evidence that crime rates rise when more women are hired, and this raises questions about whether norming tests or altering their content to create equal pass rates is preferable. The paper examines how the changing composition of police departments affects such measures as the murder of and assaults against police officers.

Abstract:
Analyzing county level data for the entire United States from 1977 to 2000, we find annual reductions in murder rates between 1.5 and 2.3 percent for each additional year that a right-to-carry law is in effect. For the first five years that such a law is in effect, the total benefit from reduced crimes usually ranges between about $2 billion and $3 billion per year.

Ayres and Donohue have simply misread their own results. Their own most generalized specification that breaks down the impact of the law on a year-by-year basis shows large crime reducing benefits. Virtually none of their claims that their county level hybrid model implies initial significant increases in crime are correct. Overall, the vast majority of their estimates based on data up to 1997 actually demonstrate that right-to-carry laws produce substantial crime reducing benefits. We show that their models also do an extremely poor job of predicting the changes in crime rates after 1997.

Abstract:
Ian Ayres and John Donohue (1999) provide a useful and positive review of my book "More Guns, Less Crime," and I agree with the directions in which they believe that more work can be done. Yet, there are some serious factual errors in their review and they also never discuss some of the strongest evidence. Finally, I was disappointed that they think that I had not responded to some previous objections raised to my research. Hopefully this response can help explain why these criticisms were mistaken.

Abstract:
The Majority Report by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights on the Presidential vote in Florida during the 2000 general election presents two types of empirical evidence that African-Americans were denied the right to vote. The report concluded that, "The Voting Rights Act prohibits both intentional discrimination and "results" discrimination. It is within the jurisdictional province of the Justice Department to pursue and a court of competent jurisdiction to decide whether the facts prove or disprove illegal discrimination under either standard." To reach their conclusion that discrimination had occurred, the majority examined the impact of race on spoiled (or non-voted) ballot rates as well as the impact of race on the exclusion from voter eligibility lists because of past felony criminal records. They relied on empirical work regarding non-voted ballots, relying solely from cross county regressions or correlations using data from 2000 alone. The evidence that African-Americans are erroneously placed on the ineligible list at higher rates than other racial groups is based upon a simple comparison of means. This paper evaluates the Majority Report and finds little evidence of any type of discrimination against African-Americans in voting.

Abstract:
This paper investigates several contested issues over how concealed handguns affect crime. Whether accounting for robust errors with clustering or reducing measurement error in the crime rates, the results consistently show large drops in violent crime rates after right-to-carry laws are adopted. By six years after the law, murder rates have fallen by 9 percent, rape by 11 percent, and robbery by 7 percent.

Crime, Deterrence, Guns

Abstract:
The paper describes an analysis of the relationship between changes in the number of guns and changes in the number of crimes. Both variables are non-negative integers with large mass points at zero, and both variables are likely to affect each other. We account for these characteristics by analyzing our data with a multivariate Poisson-lognormal model that we estimate with the Gibbs sampler. Because county-level data on gun ownership are not available, we use data on subscriptions to the gun magazine Handguns Magazine as a proxy. We do not find any evidence of a pattern that would suggest that either more gun magazine sales lead to more crimes or that more crimes lead to more gun magazine sales.

Gun Control, Markov chain Monte Carlo, Gibbs sampler

Abstract:
This paper shows that most of the large recent increases in campaign spending for Federal and state offices can be explained by higher government spending. This result holds for both Federal and state legislative campaigns and gubernatorial races and across many different specifications. Evidence is also examined on whether it is the composition and not just the level of expenditures which determines campaign expenditures and whether higher government expenditures similarly results in more candidates competing for office. The data provide some indication that legislative term limits reduce campaign expenditures and increase the number of candidates running for office. Finally, by focusing on the symptoms and not the root causes of ever higher campaign expenditures, this paper argues that the current public policy debate risks changing the form that payments are made rather than actually restricting the level of competition.

Campaign Expenditures, Government Growth, Rent Seeking

Abstract:
Maltz and Targonski (2002) have provided an important service by disaggregating the county level data to help researchers examine measurement errors in the county level data, but their conclusion 'that county-level crime data, as they are currently constituted, should not be used, especially in policy studies' is not justified. All data has measurement error, presumably even their measures of this error. Unfortunately, however, Maltz and Targonski provide no systematic test for how bad the data is. Their graphs obscure both the small number of counties affected, that these are rural counties, and that just because some of the population in a county is not represented in calculating the crime rate, that is not the same thing as showing that the reported number is in error. Nor do they provide evidence for the more important issue of whether there is a systematic bias in the data. The evidence provided here indicates right-to-carry laws continue to produce substantial reductions in violent crime rates when states with the greatest measurement error are excluded. In fact, the restricting the sample results in somewhat larger reductions in murders and robberies, but smaller reductions in aggravated assaults.

Measurement error, county level UCR crime data, systematic biases

Abstract:
Using voting data for presidential elections from 1976 to 2000, this paper documents an unusual and large drop off in Republican voting rates for Florida's western Panhandle during the 2000 general elections. Little change appears to have occurred in the rate that non-Republicans voted. The results appear more consistent with the early call that Democrats affected Republican voting rates than the networks discouraging all voters from voting by incorrectly calling the polls closed in the western Panhandle.

Abstract:
We examine several theoretical and empirical issues concerning punitive damage awards and their importance to businesses. First, we argue that previous justifications of punitive awards ignore the role of private contracting and reputation in assuring contractual performance. In the absence of externalities, punitive awards are not necessary to assure contractual performance even when firms face less than a 100% probability of being sued for contractual breach. Next, we examine empirically the sizes, determinants, and valuation impacts of punitive awards assessed against publicly held companies. We find that settlement amounts are low compared to jury awards, and punitive awards are highly variable and difficult to explain using characteristics of the lawsuit or defendant company. Supreme Court and legislative actions affecting punitive awards generally have not had systematic impacts on firm values. Specific punitive lawsuits, however, decrease the values of defendant companies by amounts that exceed settlement or jury verdict amounts, indicating that punitive lawsuits impose reputational costs on defendants.

Abstract:
This paper examines the sizes of the fines, damage awards, remediation costs, and market value losses imposed on companies that violate environmental regulations. Firms violating environmental laws suffer statistically significant losses in the market value of firm equity. The losses, however, are of similar magnitudes to the legal penalties imposed; and in the cross section, the market value loss is related to the size of the legal penalty. Thus, environmental violations are disciplined largely through legal and regulatory penalties, not through reputational penalties.

Environmental violations, corporate misconduct, legal penalties, reputation costs

Abstract:
The debate over government-provided insurance for Americans frequently makes two assumptions: that the uninsured are unsatisfied with the health care they receive and that government health insurance would improve the quality of care for the uninsured. This paper finds that the vast majority of uninsured Americans are satisfied with their health care. Indeed, only 2.3 percent of Americans are both uninsured and very dissatisfied with the quality of the medical care that they receive. The paper finds that Canadians are much closer to uninsured Americans than to insured Americans in their satisfaction with their health care. There is also little difference in the level of Americans' satisfaction with their health care based upon race, marital status, educational attainment, income, or political views. There is some difference in satisfaction based on age and between the most extreme levels of educational attainment.

Uninsured, Health care, Canada, Insurance

Abstract:
The results provide some evidence of vote fraud in U.S. general elections. Regulations that prevent fraud are shown to actually increase the voter participation rate. It is hard to see any evidence that voting regulations differentially harm either minorities, the elderly, or the poor. While this study examines a broad range of voting regulations, it is still too early to evaluate any possible impact of mandatory photo IDs on U.S. elections. What can be said is that the non-photo ID regulations that are already in place have not had the negative impacts that opponents predicted. The evidence provided here also found that campaign finance regulations generally reduced voter turnout.

Vote Fraud, Photo ID, Non-photo ID, Campaign Finance,

Abstract:
Both Republicans and Democrats complain about the difficulty in getting judges confirmed when it is their nominees who are up for confirmation, but there has not been any systematic study of either how much worse this problem has gotten nor what its causes might be. Several patterns do emerge for data from the beginning of Jimmy Carter's administration through the end of George W. Bush's first term. It is taking even longer for confirmation, and the more important the position, the longer confirmation takes. Among the findings, it took almost three times longer for Circuit Court judges to be confirmed under George W. Bush than under his father. The rate of confirmation for Circuit Court judges has also fallen while the confirmation rate for District Court judges has risen. Higher quality judges, measured by their output once they are on the court (e.g., number of citations to their opinions or number of published opinions), take much longer to get confirmed. Evaluated at the mean judicial quality, a one percent increase in judicial quality increases the length of the confirmation process by between 1 and 3 percent. Many of the traditional ex ante measures of judicial quality such as where they went to law school or a nominee's American Bar Association ratings add little if anything to predicting how well they will do on the bench. A one percent increase in polarization in the voting differences between the political parties in the Senate produce between a 3 and 10 percent increase in the length of the confirmation process for Circuit Court judges. Even after accounting for quality differences, Republican Circuit Court nominees also have significantly lower ABA ratings than Democratic nominees and ABA scores don't affect the length of Circuit Court confirmations.

Judicial nominations, characteristics of judicial nominees, length of confirmation rate

Abstract:
With the enormous controversy over the 2000 Presidential election in Florida, the focus on the non-voted ballots in Presidential races is understandable. Yet, those going to the polls fail to select a candidate in other races down the ballot at even higher rates, and the voting system used. The ward-level data presented here for Ohio elections during 1992, 1996, and 2000 demonstrate that the focus on races at the top of the ballot has been very misleading. The rush to eliminate punch card ballots actually risks increasing the number of non-votes for other offices by much more than non-votes for Presidential elections are reduced.

Non-voted ballot rates, discrimination, electronic voting, punch cards

Abstract:
In the Grutter case, Justice O'Connor suggested that universities could justifiably try to enroll a critical mass of minority students. Enroll fewer than that critical mass, reason some observers, and minority students will feel too marginalized to perform at their highest levels. In this article, we test whether minority students perform better with other students from their ethnic group in a class or school. To do so, we assemble data on the ethnicity and performance of each student in all classes at two law schools - for three years at one, and for sixteen years at the other. We find no consistent evidence that having additional students from one's ethnic group raises a student's performance. Instead, we find some evidence that having additional ethnic peers lowers performance - albeit by a very small amount (US, Canada).

Abstract:
The Pennsylvania state government taking over the Philadelphia school system raises important questions about how poorly Philadelphia schools were actually doing. The city had enacted a number of reforms during the mid-1990s, from instituting full day schooling for Kindergarten to increased teacher training. Some claim that Philadelphia suffered from reduced funding from the state government. This study evaluates these reforms and claims using the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) Exam for the entire state of Pennsylvania from 1991 to 2001. Among the findings is that per pupil spending in Philadelphia during the 1990s was not significantly related to test scores and that the returns were significantly less for spending in the rest of the state.

Abstract:
The debate over government-provided insurance for Americans frequently makes two assumptions: that the uninsured are unsatisfied with the health care they receive and that government health insurance would improve the quality of care for the uninsured. This paper finds that the vast majority of uninsured Americans are satisfied with their health care. Indeed, only 2.3 percent of Americans are both uninsured and very dissatisfied with the quality of the medical care that they receive. The paper finds that Canadians are much closer to uninsured Americans than to insured Americans in their satisfaction with their health care. There is also little difference in the level of Americans' satisfaction with their health care based upon race, marital status, educational attainment, income, or political views. There is some difference in satisfaction based on age and between the most extreme levels of educational attainment.

Uninsured, Health care, Canada, Insurance

Abstract:
Using recent survey data, this article examines how Canadians compare with insured Americans and uninsured Americans in their level of satisfaction with their health care. The data reveal that the vast majority of Americans, whether insured or uninsured, get timely access to quality care and are satisfied with it. It further finds that for most comparisons, Canadians are experiencing satisfaction levels much closer to that of America’s uninsured than they are to America’s insured.

healthcare, healthcare satisfaction, uninsured healthcare satisfaction

Abstract:
Much recent research in the economics of information has analyzed the implications of alternative market structures in the presence of qualitative characteristics which cannot be accurately and objectively measured or described. This approach avoids the more basic question of the influence of qualitative information on the emergence of market structures. This paper argues that market structures arise which minimize total average production and information costs and that qualitative characteristics produce structures utilizing reputation.

Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and resident of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org

Abstract:
This study reveals the ABA as systematically giving lower ratings to Republican circuit court nominees, although no similar bias appears to exist for district court nominees. The data shows how important it is to separate the evidence for circuit and district court nominees. This study fits in with my previous research showing that it is the brightest nominees who face the most difficult time getting confirmed. One difference with earlier findings is that the biases seem to be hidden and are worse than looking at the averages across administrations. For example, the oldest Republican nominees, who will not be on the court for long, receive the highest ratings. The reverse is true for Democratic nominees. Similarly, the research explains why Republican nominees tend to get their lowest evaluations from the ABA when the Democrats control the Senate. Another factor that stands out is that Republican nominees who have written opinion pieces suffer large much lower ratings than Democrats who have done the same thing.

judicial confirmations

Abstract:
Despite all the work on how campaign donations influence politician's behavior, the nagging question of whether contributions alter how the politician votes or whether these contributions constitute support for like-minded individuals remains unresolved. By combining the campaign contributions literature with the work on politicians intrinsically valuing policy outcomes, we offer a simple test that examines how politicians' voting patterns change when they retire and no longer face the threat of lost campaign contributions. If contributions are causing individual politicians to vote differently, there should be systematic changes in voting behavior when future contributions are eliminated. On the other hand, if contributors donate to candidates who intrinsically value the same policies, there should be no changes in how a politician votes during the last period.

Abstract:
During the last couple of decades courts have intervened in employment relationships by allowing employees to circumvent the workers' compensation liability restrictions. Recent papers point to firms divesting themselves of operations whose employees handled dangerous substances as firms protecting themselves from these new liabilities. Supposedly, these actions prevent their workers from being justly compensated. We show that the central legal premise behind this argument is wrong. Firms cannot expose workers to hazards and then eliminate this liability by divesting or shutting down the hazardous operation. This paper also shows that workers were already being well compensated for carcinogenic exposures even before the courts started allowing workers to collect large damages for occupational illnesses. Instituting the new liability rules also coincided with a large drop in earnings premiums. The compensation for carcinogenic exposures implies values of life that are comparable to studies examining other occupational risks. Our best estimate is $6 million in 1984 dollars, with a range of 1.2 to $12 million. The large premiums imply that workers who were employed prior to the legal changes received court awards which essentially compensated them a second time for their misfortune.

Abstract:
Many recent game-theoretic models suggest that with asymmetric information it can be profitable for firms to acquire a reputation for toughness to discourage later entry. We identify institutional arrangements which firms must undertake if predatory commitments are to be credible. For example, simply hiring managers who value market share or output maximization is insufficient if managers can be removed whenever it actually becomes necessary to engage in predation. Firms must also make removing the manager more difficult. We find no evidence that allegedly predatory firms are organized as these game-theoretic models imply. If anything, the reverse seems to be frequently true.

Abstract:
If shareholders own diversified portfolios, and if companies impose externalities on one another, shareholders do not want value maximization to be corporate policy. Instead, shareholders want companies to maximize portfolio values. This occurs when firms internalize between-firm externalities. Any kind of externality, pecuniary or nonpecuniary, vertical or horizontal, suffices. What matters is simply that one company's actions affect another's value. Thus, besides the traditional benefit of risk reduction, portfolio diversification offers additional benefits to shareholders through helping internalize externalities. This paper documents the extent of diversification and cross-ownership of stocks among companies where these externalities are likely to be large and provides a capital market test of how merger offers vary with the extent of cross-ownership.

Abstract:
Using cross-sectional time-series data for U.S. counties from 1977 to 1992, we find that allowing citizens to carry concealed weapons deters violent crimes and it appears to produce no increase in accidental deaths. If those states which did not have right-to-carry concealed gun provisions had adopted them in 1992, approximately 1,570 murders; 4,177 rapes; and over 60,000 aggravated assaults would have been avoided yearly. On the other hand, consistent with the notion of criminals responding to incentives, we find criminals substituting into property crimes involving stealth and where the probabilities of contact between the criminal and the victim are minimal. The largest population counties where the deterrence effect on violent crimes is greatest are where the substitution effect into property crimes is highest. Concealed handguns also have their greatest deterrent effect in the highest crime counties. Higher arrest and conviction rates consistently and dramatically reduce the crime rate. Consistent with other recent work, the results imply that increasing the arrest rate, independent of the probability of eventual conviction, imposes a significant penalty on criminals. The estimated annual gain from allowing concealed handguns is at least $6.214 billion.

Abstract:
Increased law enforcement or penalties may deter crime, but they may also cause criminals to move to other crimes or other areas. This paper examines whether the adopting a shall issue concealed weapons law in one state alters crime in neighboring areas. The benefits that a county obtains from it's state passing a shall issue concealed handgun law are generally stronger than those found in previous work. Spillover effects on neighboring areas are almost always deleterious. Criminals tend to move across communities more readily in response to changes in concealed handgun laws than in response to changes in arrest rates. The spillover effects are surprisingly large, especially for property crimes, thus questioning existing research which ignores these considerations. The spillovers are immediate and increase over time (with the exception of assaults and auto theft). Except for rapes, the negative effects of a neighbor's law are mitigated by having one's own state adopting the law. Taken together these results imply that concealed handguns deter criminals and that the largest reductions in violent crime will be obtained when all the states adopt these laws. We find little evidence that increased arrest rates create similar spillovers.

Abstract:
Authors' description of their paper:Criminal defense expenditures have come under severe criticisms because differential expenditures are equated with unequal justice. Trials such as O.J. Simpson's draw particularly strong reactions: "Wealthy defendants can afford attorneys who are skilled at manipulating the system.... The result...is that the rich get a different, more friendly brand of justice." We argue that allowing disparities in criminal defense expenditures can ensure that innocent defendants face lower penalties from going to trial. These expenditures also mitigate the effects of systematic differences in risk aversion, thus increasing the probability that the efficient screening properties of a plea bargaining system are preserved. The innocent defendant not only has a more favorable assessment ofthe likelihood of his success at trial than the guilty one, based upon facts not observable to the prosecution, but, as we show, he also faces, ceteris paribus, resource costs from trial that are less than or equal to those borne by guilty defendants. Both the lower expected chance of conviction and the lower costs of going to trial reduce the incentive for the innocent defendant to falsely plead guilty.