Date of Award

January 2017

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Economics & Finance

First Advisor

Chih Ming Tan

Abstract

From 1980 to 1992, Dallas, Texas saw an increase in both gun violence and the number of firearms. Nine firearm measures that define Dallas, Texas’ street gun arsenal along with two gun violence measures are used to test whether firearms are causing an increase in gun violence or gun violence is causing an increase in firearms. By estimating vector autoregressions and employing Granger causality tests on one firearm measure and one gun violence measure, the result is that the rising number of homicides committed with a gun are causing an increase in the total number of firearms. There is little evidence to suggest that firearms are causing the increases in gun violence.

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