Trust But Verify: Lessons for the Empirical Evaluation of Law and Policy
20 Pages Posted: 24 Mar 2012 Last revised: 11 Apr 2014
Date Written: Jamuary 25, 2012
Abstract
In a recent article, Aneja, Donohue and Zhang claim that they are unable to replicate the regressions published by the National Research Council in Chapter 6 of Firearms and Violence. They conclude that the NRC regressions must have been based on bad data supplied by John Lott. The implication is that earlier studies that found that right-to-carry laws reduced crime were flawed because of bad data. However, we can replicate the NRC results with Lott’s original data and with the data set used by the NRC. The earlier studies are not flawed by bad data.
Keywords: crime, guns, firerarms, right-to-carry laws, shall issue laws, National Research Council
JEL Classification: K42
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation