It is a “working paper.” That means it is apparently not finished, not published (other than posted on a website), and presumably not peer reviewed. (what am i missing?)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w23510
Right-to-Carry Laws and Violent Crime: A Comprehensive Assessment Using Panel Data and a State-Level Synthetic Controls Analysis
John J. Donohue, Abhay Aneja, Kyle D. Weber
NBER Working Paper No. 23510
Issued in June 2017
NBER Program(s): LE
The 2004 report of the National Research Council (NRC) on Firearms and Violence recognized that violent crime was higher in the post-passage period (relative to national crime patterns) for states adopting right-to-carry (RTC) concealed handgun laws, but because of model dependence the panel was unable to identify the true causal effect of these laws from the then-existing panel data evidence. This study uses 14 additional years of panel data (through 2014) capturing an additional 11 RTC adoptions and new statistical techniques to see if more convincing and robust conclusions can emerge.
Our preferred panel data regression specification (the “DAW model”) and the Brennan Center (BC) model, as well as other statistical models by Lott and Mustard (LM) and Moody and Marvell (MM) that had previously been offered as evidence of crime-reducing RTC laws, now consistently generate estimates showing RTC laws increase overall violent crime and/or murder when run on the most complete data.
We then use the synthetic control approach of Alberto Abadie and Javier Gardeazabal (2003) to generate state-specific estimates of the impact of RTC laws on crime. Our major finding is that under all four specifications (DAW, BC, LM, and MM), RTC laws are associated with higher aggregate violent crime rates, and the size of the deleterious effects that are associated with the passage of RTC laws climbs over time. We estimate that the adoption of RTC laws substantially elevates violent crime rates, but seems to have no impact on property crime and murder rates. Ten years after the adoption of RTC laws, violent crime is estimated to be 13-15% percent higher than it would have been without the RTC law. Unlike the panel data setting, these results are not sensitive to the covariates included as predictors. The magnitude of the estimated increase in violent crime from RTC laws is substantial in that, using a consensus estimate for the elasticity of crime with respect to incarceration of .15, the average RTC state would have to double its prison population to counteract the RTC-induced increase in violent crime.
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I wonder if there is a “synthetic” program that simulates Lubee’s Cafeteria...
John J. Donohue III also wrote the ghastly-titled "Further Evidence that Legalized Abortion Lowered Crime." So right off the bat, we know we're dealing with a dark soul
At a post -election symposium at Stanford, Mr Donahue said "...Justice Antonin Scalia came to embrace a fanatical view of the Second Amendment, and since Trump has indicated he will try to appoint someone like Scalia to the Court, it is a safe bet to say that Trump will be seeking a similarly extreme voice for the Court on gun issues....The primary concern is that a series of Scalia-like judicial appointments would enshrine a deviant and damaging view of the Second Amendment that would thwart all reasonable gun control measures." So we know Professor Snowflake is coming from a position of instability on two fronts.
I tried downloading the paper but you HAVE TO PAY FOR IT!! Not wanting to give my crdit card # to the NBER, I was able to get the vital flaw in the design from a summary:(Pardon the length, but this is key.)
Donohue and his team employed...the synthetic control approach, a research method now widely applied in economics and political science, (that) uses an algorithm that combines crime patterns from several non-RTC states – or during the time before states adopted RTC – to create an artificial or synthetic state.
Take Texas, which passed RTC laws in 1996. Donohue’s comparison for Texas came from combining data from California – a non-RTC state – and Nebraska and Wisconsin, which hadn’t pass RTC laws at that time. By weighting the violent crime data from these three states for the period from 1986 to 1996, he produced a synthetic crime rate similar to Texas’ crime rate in the 10 years prior to adopting RTC laws.
Donohue then projected the synthetic state’s crime rate for the next 10 years and compared it against Texas’ crime rate post-RTC passage. He performed the same analysis on the 33 states that enacted RTC laws over his data period...
In sum, the study is based on comaparisons of actual Right-to-Carry (RTC) states with several "fake parallel states". The potential to bias the design to get the desired response is YUGE!! In fact, with so many ACTUAL states whereby to make the comparison (where the results are obviously pro-RTC) the obvious -and rhetorical- question is "why build fake states when you have actual states?" Elementary, My Dear Watson...I don't like guns and I want to eradicate them.
I feel a Michael Bellesiles moment coming.