CROSS-BORDER SPILLOVER: U.S. GUN LAWS AND VIOLENCE IN MEXICO (Dube, Dube & García Ponce)

[Román Culebro Martínez]

To what extent, and under what conditions, does access to arms fuel violent crime? To answer this question, we exploit a unique natural experiment: the 2004 expiration of the U.S. Federal Assault Weapons Ban exerted a spillover on gun supply in Mexican municipios near Texas, Arizona and New Mexico, but not near California, which retained a pre-existing state level ban. We find first that Mexican municipios located closer to the non-California border states experienced differential increases in homicides, gun-related homicides and crime gun seizures in the post-2004 period...

 Cross_border_spillover.pdf