Languages


Mehmet Baç

 

The fact that guns can both cause and deter violent crimes is at the source of the ongoing debate over proper regulation of guns. Understanding the relationship between victims’ and offenders’ demands for guns is important for the formulation of sound gun control policies. A recent article in the Journal of Public Economics by Mehmet Bac (2010) shows that the relationship depends on the impact of the gun on the success probability of an offense against armed and unarmed victims. For example, if by acting with a gun the (marginal) offender produces a larger increase in the probability of successfully completing the offense against unarmed victims, then, less guns in victims' hands implies more guns in offenders' hands. To illustrate, suppose that an unarmed offender's probability of successfully completing the offense is 0.1 against an armed victim and 0.4 against an unarmed victim, whereas if he acts with a gun these probabilities rise to 0.2 and 0.6, respectively. Therefore by acting with a gun he raises the probability of success by 0.1 if the victim is armed, by 0.2 if the victim is unarmed. Symmetrically, the victim by acquiring a gun can reduce the probability of harm to his property by 0.4 (from 0.6 to 0.2) in the case of an armed offense, by 0.3 (from 0.4 to 0.1) in the case of an unarmed offense. For this example Bac’s prediction is that more arms at victims’ hands reduces armed offenses, whereas more arms at offenders' hands increases gun ownership by potential victims. The paper also investigates optimal sanctions for armed and unarmed offenses and derives the first-best gun control policy: disarm all offenders but allow the attractive potential victims to own guns.

In other research in the field of law and economics, Mehmet Bac has previously investigated optimal corruption control policies, the relation between social trust and wealth, and optimal sanction schedules for unpaid fines.