... ROB-ERT B. ARCHIBALD CLYDE A. HAULMAN CARLISLE E. MOODY, JR ... Using the standardtest for di... more ... ROB-ERT B. ARCHIBALD CLYDE A. HAULMAN CARLISLE E. MOODY, JR ... Using the standardtest for differences between two correlation coefficients, we find that the dif-ference ... Total advertising expenditures in the three magazines dropped from 13.37 million dollars in the six ...
The impact of state prison populations on crime is typically estimated by applying the lambda, th... more The impact of state prison populations on crime is typically estimated by applying the lambda, the individual crime rate, of prisoners or arrestees. We outline the problems with this approach, attempt to reanalyze the widely divergent lambdas derived in past research, and make adjustments necessary to use lambdas for estimating the incapacitation impact. The result is an uncertain estimate of 16 to 25 index crimes averted per year per each additional prisoner. We argue that regression analysis can provide a better estimate of the impact of prison population growth. Applying the Granger test to pooled state data over 19 years, we found that prison population growth leads to lower crime rates but that crime rate changes have little or no short-term impact on prison population growth. Next we regressed crime rates on prison population and conclude that, on average, at least 17 index crimes are averted per additional prisoner. The impact is limited mainly to property crime.
Along with coauthors, John J. Donohue of the Stanford Law School regularly releases empirical res... more Along with coauthors, John J. Donohue of the Stanford Law School regularly releases empirical research finding that certain laws concerning the carrying of firearms, those known as right-to-carry or RTC laws, increase violent crime. We have engaged with the previous releases to show that the latest findings are not robust, and here we do so again. This time we address something maintained in the previous releases, namely the weighting of fixed-effects regressions by population, and something that is new to the last two versions, namely a synthetic control procedure. Perhaps after another round or two it will be time to recap all the robustness criticisms to date, but here we confine ourselves to the two new criticisms. Donohue, Abhay Aneja, and Kyle Weber (hereafter DAW) have produced two revisions (2018a; b) to their 2017 working paper, which itself is part of a series of papers dating back 15 years (
In 2016, Adam Lankford published an article in Violence and Victims titled "Public Mass Shooters ... more In 2016, Adam Lankford published an article in Violence and Victims titled "Public Mass Shooters and Firearms: A Cross-National Study of 171 Countries." In the article he concludes: "Despite having less than 5% of the global population (World Factbook, 2014), it [the United States] had 31% of global public mass shooters" (Lankford 2016, 195). Lankford claims to show that over the 47 years from 1966 to 2012, both in the United States and around the world there were 292 cases of "public mass shooters" of which 90, or 31 percent, were American. Lankford attributes America's outsized percentage of international public mass shooters to widespread gun ownership. Besides doing so in the article, he has done so in public discourse (e.g., Lankford 2017). Lankford's findings struck a chord with President Obama: "I say this every time we've got one of these mass shootings: This just doesn't happen in other countries." -President Obama, news conference at COP21 climate conference in Paris, Dec. 1
The fact that an individual is willing to commit the most serious crime that carries with it the ... more The fact that an individual is willing to commit the most serious crime that carries with it the most serious punishment means that that person is unlikely to be deterred by laws with less serious consequences. This situation is compounded by the fact that many multiple victim public shooters are expecting, even planning, to die in the commission of their crimes. Combining newly developed and traditional difference-in-differences methodologies, we analyze several policies that have been suggested as possibly effective in reducing deaths due to mass public shootings. We find that none of the proposed policies significantly reduce such deaths. However, we find evidence that mass public shooting deaths are lower in places that allow the carrying of concealed firearms.
The rights to explore and develop the petroleum reserves of the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) are... more The rights to explore and develop the petroleum reserves of the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) are sold to private companies via sealed bid auction. The bid is a cash payment or "bonus bid" paid to the government in exchange for the right to drill.' Until April 1983, the auctions were organized according to a set of procedures known as "nomination and tract selection." Under these rules, potential bidders would nominate tracts of land that they wanted to bid on. The Minerals Management Service (MMS) of the Department of the Interior would select tracts from those nominated, evaluate them to determine a reservation price or "presale value," and offer them for lease. After April 1983, the Department of the Interior implemented a new set of procedures known as "areawide leasing." Instead of relying on bidders to nominate tracts of land, MMS began to offer vast areas of OCS land at each sale. The result was a large increase in the number of tracts offered for sale in areawide sales
In 1997, John Lott and David Mustard published an important paper in which they found that right-... more In 1997, John Lott and David Mustard published an important paper in which they found that right-to-carry concealed weapons laws reduce violent crime. Although Lott and Mustard appear to do all possible variations of the analysis, a closer reading reveals that the study might suffer from several possibly important errors. I reestimate the model and check for incorrect functional form, omitted variables, and possible second-order bias in the t-ratios. Lott and Mustard's basic conclusions are generally robust with respect to these potential econometric problems. Overall, right-to-carry concealed weapons laws tend to reduce violent crime. The effect on property crime is more uncertain. I find evidence that these laws also reduce burglary. * Paper presented at the conference Guns, Crime, and Safety, December 10-11, 1999, at the American Enterprise Institute. The conference was sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute and the Center for Studies in Law at the Yale School of Law. I would like to thank Thomas B. Marvell, John R. Lott, and an anonymous referee for suggesting substantial improvements. I am solely responsible for all remaining deficiencies.
Legislation mandating minimum sentences or additions to sentences for crimes committed with guns ... more Legislation mandating minimum sentences or additions to sentences for crimes committed with guns is a frequent response to gun problems. We compiled these state laws and estimated their impact on state prison populations, prison admissions, UCR crime rates, and gun use in homicides, assaults and robberies. We employed a multiple time series research design, with data for nearly all states over the past 16 to 24 years, such that for any one state the remaining states operated as controls. Several small-scale studies have suggested that the laws might reduce some types of gun crime. We found that the laws produced such an impact in no more than a few states and that there is little evidence that the laws generally reduce crime or increase prison populations. *We thank the reviewers, Gary Kleck and David McDowall for valuable comments. The data used here can be obtained from Thomas Marvel1 at Box 3002,
Abstract This paper presents a small, annual model of natural gas supply used for policy analysis... more Abstract This paper presents a small, annual model of natural gas supply used for policy analysis by the US General Accounting Office. The model incorporates a realistically complex lag structure and complex dynamics while maintaining a simple theoretical ...
Guns, especially handguns, can be used both by criminals and citizens. We estimate several models... more Guns, especially handguns, can be used both by criminals and citizens. We estimate several models of handguns and crime based on state-level panel data for 1981-1998 using both General Social Survey data on handgun prevalence and a new proxy for gun prevalence. We find that handguns have a negligible effect on crime. Apparently, there is no causation in either direction, or a rough balance between criminals who use handguns in the commission of crime and citizens who use handguns to defend themselves and deter crime.
This paper presents the results of fitting a scaled translog restricted profit function to 'pseud... more This paper presents the results of fitting a scaled translog restricted profit function to 'pseudo'-data formed by repeated runs of a large linear programming model of domestic and international refining. The translog approximation is designed to estimate the marginal cost of producing eight petroleum products given the amounts of each product demanded and the price of crude oil. We test the model against out-of-sample data from the refinery model and historical data. The model is used in the US Department of Energy's Annual Energy Outlook forecasting system. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) prepares forecasts of domestic energy production, consumption, distribution, and prices which are published in the Annual Energy Outlook (AEO-EIA, 1991a). The forecasting methodology entails projecting a general equilibrium for domestic energy markets given the characteristics of the international energy markets and the domestic macroeconomy. An important component of the forecasting system is the Oil Marketing Module (OMM). This model forecasts the supply prices or 'refinery gate' prices of domestically produced petroleum products, conditional upon the world price of crude oil and the amount of each product supplied. These prices are the marginal costs of production for each product which are then marked up to retail by the costs of distribution and marketing. In use, the OMM is iterated to convergence with product-demand models for each forecast year. Because of the amount of detail required, large linear programming models are often used to estimate the marginal costs of refining. Although the EIA has several refinery LP models available to it, they are too large and slow to be used with the other models in the AEO forecasting system. In this paper we present the version of OMM being used by the Energy Information Administration. EIA specified that the model be small enough to incorporate into EIA's PCbased AEO forecasting system, retain a relationship to the technical detail of refinery 0277-6693/93/0SO421-16$13 .OO
... By CARLISLE E. MOODY College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia ... We also estimate... more ... By CARLISLE E. MOODY College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia ... We also estimated a multinomial selection model with chloice categories, zero, one, two, and three or more ... On the finite sample distribution of generalized classical linear identifi-ability test statistics. ...
The magnitude of the estimated coefficient on a proxy variable in a regression is only useful in ... more The magnitude of the estimated coefficient on a proxy variable in a regression is only useful in determining sign and significance. Two recent papers on the relationship between guns and crime incorrectly state that such coefficients have important policy implications.
In this paper we estimate production functions for surface and underground coal mines. These prod... more In this paper we estimate production functions for surface and underground coal mines. These production functions are then used to estimate individual mine productivity, to explain productivity differentials across mines, and to assess the importance of several assumed ...
The major crime-reduction strategy in this country is to imprison more and more criminals. Past s... more The major crime-reduction strategy in this country is to imprison more and more criminals. Past studies of its effectiveness in reducing homicide have produced wildly divergent results. The authors analyze the homicide-prison relationship with a time series over 1930-1994, finding that a 10% increase in prison population is associated with roughly 13% fewer homicides. The authors also studied assault and robbery, two crime types linked to homicide, and again found negative associations with prison population.
... ROB-ERT B. ARCHIBALD CLYDE A. HAULMAN CARLISLE E. MOODY, JR ... Using the standardtest for di... more ... ROB-ERT B. ARCHIBALD CLYDE A. HAULMAN CARLISLE E. MOODY, JR ... Using the standardtest for differences between two correlation coefficients, we find that the dif-ference ... Total advertising expenditures in the three magazines dropped from 13.37 million dollars in the six ...
The impact of state prison populations on crime is typically estimated by applying the lambda, th... more The impact of state prison populations on crime is typically estimated by applying the lambda, the individual crime rate, of prisoners or arrestees. We outline the problems with this approach, attempt to reanalyze the widely divergent lambdas derived in past research, and make adjustments necessary to use lambdas for estimating the incapacitation impact. The result is an uncertain estimate of 16 to 25 index crimes averted per year per each additional prisoner. We argue that regression analysis can provide a better estimate of the impact of prison population growth. Applying the Granger test to pooled state data over 19 years, we found that prison population growth leads to lower crime rates but that crime rate changes have little or no short-term impact on prison population growth. Next we regressed crime rates on prison population and conclude that, on average, at least 17 index crimes are averted per additional prisoner. The impact is limited mainly to property crime.
Along with coauthors, John J. Donohue of the Stanford Law School regularly releases empirical res... more Along with coauthors, John J. Donohue of the Stanford Law School regularly releases empirical research finding that certain laws concerning the carrying of firearms, those known as right-to-carry or RTC laws, increase violent crime. We have engaged with the previous releases to show that the latest findings are not robust, and here we do so again. This time we address something maintained in the previous releases, namely the weighting of fixed-effects regressions by population, and something that is new to the last two versions, namely a synthetic control procedure. Perhaps after another round or two it will be time to recap all the robustness criticisms to date, but here we confine ourselves to the two new criticisms. Donohue, Abhay Aneja, and Kyle Weber (hereafter DAW) have produced two revisions (2018a; b) to their 2017 working paper, which itself is part of a series of papers dating back 15 years (
In 2016, Adam Lankford published an article in Violence and Victims titled "Public Mass Shooters ... more In 2016, Adam Lankford published an article in Violence and Victims titled "Public Mass Shooters and Firearms: A Cross-National Study of 171 Countries." In the article he concludes: "Despite having less than 5% of the global population (World Factbook, 2014), it [the United States] had 31% of global public mass shooters" (Lankford 2016, 195). Lankford claims to show that over the 47 years from 1966 to 2012, both in the United States and around the world there were 292 cases of "public mass shooters" of which 90, or 31 percent, were American. Lankford attributes America's outsized percentage of international public mass shooters to widespread gun ownership. Besides doing so in the article, he has done so in public discourse (e.g., Lankford 2017). Lankford's findings struck a chord with President Obama: "I say this every time we've got one of these mass shootings: This just doesn't happen in other countries." -President Obama, news conference at COP21 climate conference in Paris, Dec. 1
The fact that an individual is willing to commit the most serious crime that carries with it the ... more The fact that an individual is willing to commit the most serious crime that carries with it the most serious punishment means that that person is unlikely to be deterred by laws with less serious consequences. This situation is compounded by the fact that many multiple victim public shooters are expecting, even planning, to die in the commission of their crimes. Combining newly developed and traditional difference-in-differences methodologies, we analyze several policies that have been suggested as possibly effective in reducing deaths due to mass public shootings. We find that none of the proposed policies significantly reduce such deaths. However, we find evidence that mass public shooting deaths are lower in places that allow the carrying of concealed firearms.
The rights to explore and develop the petroleum reserves of the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) are... more The rights to explore and develop the petroleum reserves of the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) are sold to private companies via sealed bid auction. The bid is a cash payment or "bonus bid" paid to the government in exchange for the right to drill.' Until April 1983, the auctions were organized according to a set of procedures known as "nomination and tract selection." Under these rules, potential bidders would nominate tracts of land that they wanted to bid on. The Minerals Management Service (MMS) of the Department of the Interior would select tracts from those nominated, evaluate them to determine a reservation price or "presale value," and offer them for lease. After April 1983, the Department of the Interior implemented a new set of procedures known as "areawide leasing." Instead of relying on bidders to nominate tracts of land, MMS began to offer vast areas of OCS land at each sale. The result was a large increase in the number of tracts offered for sale in areawide sales
In 1997, John Lott and David Mustard published an important paper in which they found that right-... more In 1997, John Lott and David Mustard published an important paper in which they found that right-to-carry concealed weapons laws reduce violent crime. Although Lott and Mustard appear to do all possible variations of the analysis, a closer reading reveals that the study might suffer from several possibly important errors. I reestimate the model and check for incorrect functional form, omitted variables, and possible second-order bias in the t-ratios. Lott and Mustard's basic conclusions are generally robust with respect to these potential econometric problems. Overall, right-to-carry concealed weapons laws tend to reduce violent crime. The effect on property crime is more uncertain. I find evidence that these laws also reduce burglary. * Paper presented at the conference Guns, Crime, and Safety, December 10-11, 1999, at the American Enterprise Institute. The conference was sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute and the Center for Studies in Law at the Yale School of Law. I would like to thank Thomas B. Marvell, John R. Lott, and an anonymous referee for suggesting substantial improvements. I am solely responsible for all remaining deficiencies.
Legislation mandating minimum sentences or additions to sentences for crimes committed with guns ... more Legislation mandating minimum sentences or additions to sentences for crimes committed with guns is a frequent response to gun problems. We compiled these state laws and estimated their impact on state prison populations, prison admissions, UCR crime rates, and gun use in homicides, assaults and robberies. We employed a multiple time series research design, with data for nearly all states over the past 16 to 24 years, such that for any one state the remaining states operated as controls. Several small-scale studies have suggested that the laws might reduce some types of gun crime. We found that the laws produced such an impact in no more than a few states and that there is little evidence that the laws generally reduce crime or increase prison populations. *We thank the reviewers, Gary Kleck and David McDowall for valuable comments. The data used here can be obtained from Thomas Marvel1 at Box 3002,
Abstract This paper presents a small, annual model of natural gas supply used for policy analysis... more Abstract This paper presents a small, annual model of natural gas supply used for policy analysis by the US General Accounting Office. The model incorporates a realistically complex lag structure and complex dynamics while maintaining a simple theoretical ...
Guns, especially handguns, can be used both by criminals and citizens. We estimate several models... more Guns, especially handguns, can be used both by criminals and citizens. We estimate several models of handguns and crime based on state-level panel data for 1981-1998 using both General Social Survey data on handgun prevalence and a new proxy for gun prevalence. We find that handguns have a negligible effect on crime. Apparently, there is no causation in either direction, or a rough balance between criminals who use handguns in the commission of crime and citizens who use handguns to defend themselves and deter crime.
This paper presents the results of fitting a scaled translog restricted profit function to 'pseud... more This paper presents the results of fitting a scaled translog restricted profit function to 'pseudo'-data formed by repeated runs of a large linear programming model of domestic and international refining. The translog approximation is designed to estimate the marginal cost of producing eight petroleum products given the amounts of each product demanded and the price of crude oil. We test the model against out-of-sample data from the refinery model and historical data. The model is used in the US Department of Energy's Annual Energy Outlook forecasting system. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) prepares forecasts of domestic energy production, consumption, distribution, and prices which are published in the Annual Energy Outlook (AEO-EIA, 1991a). The forecasting methodology entails projecting a general equilibrium for domestic energy markets given the characteristics of the international energy markets and the domestic macroeconomy. An important component of the forecasting system is the Oil Marketing Module (OMM). This model forecasts the supply prices or 'refinery gate' prices of domestically produced petroleum products, conditional upon the world price of crude oil and the amount of each product supplied. These prices are the marginal costs of production for each product which are then marked up to retail by the costs of distribution and marketing. In use, the OMM is iterated to convergence with product-demand models for each forecast year. Because of the amount of detail required, large linear programming models are often used to estimate the marginal costs of refining. Although the EIA has several refinery LP models available to it, they are too large and slow to be used with the other models in the AEO forecasting system. In this paper we present the version of OMM being used by the Energy Information Administration. EIA specified that the model be small enough to incorporate into EIA's PCbased AEO forecasting system, retain a relationship to the technical detail of refinery 0277-6693/93/0SO421-16$13 .OO
... By CARLISLE E. MOODY College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia ... We also estimate... more ... By CARLISLE E. MOODY College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia ... We also estimated a multinomial selection model with chloice categories, zero, one, two, and three or more ... On the finite sample distribution of generalized classical linear identifi-ability test statistics. ...
The magnitude of the estimated coefficient on a proxy variable in a regression is only useful in ... more The magnitude of the estimated coefficient on a proxy variable in a regression is only useful in determining sign and significance. Two recent papers on the relationship between guns and crime incorrectly state that such coefficients have important policy implications.
In this paper we estimate production functions for surface and underground coal mines. These prod... more In this paper we estimate production functions for surface and underground coal mines. These production functions are then used to estimate individual mine productivity, to explain productivity differentials across mines, and to assess the importance of several assumed ...
The major crime-reduction strategy in this country is to imprison more and more criminals. Past s... more The major crime-reduction strategy in this country is to imprison more and more criminals. Past studies of its effectiveness in reducing homicide have produced wildly divergent results. The authors analyze the homicide-prison relationship with a time series over 1930-1994, finding that a 10% increase in prison population is associated with roughly 13% fewer homicides. The authors also studied assault and robbery, two crime types linked to homicide, and again found negative associations with prison population.
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Papers by Carlisle Moody