This paper reviews the econometric issues in efforts to estimate the impact of the death penalty on murder, focusing on six recent studies published since 2003. We highlight the large number of choices that must be made when specifying the various panel data models that have been used to address...

Does the death penalty save lives? A surge of recent interest in this question has yielded a series of papers purporting to show robust and precise estimates of a substantial deterrent effect of capital punishment. We assess the various approaches that have been used in this literature, testing...

There is a consensus that the proportion of suicides committed with a firearm is the best proxy for gun ownership prevalence. Cerqueira et al. (2018) exploit the socioeconomic characteristics of suicide victims in order to develop a new and more refined proxy. It is based on the fixed effects of...