Primary Submission Category: Difference in Differences, Synthetic Control, Methods for Panel and Longitudinal Data
Smoking heat Gun: estimating the effect of heatwaves on gun violence through a distance augmented synthetic control method
Authors: Giulio Grossi, Falco Johannes Bargagli Stoffi, Leo Vanciu,
Presenting Author: Giulio Grossi*
Gun violence in the United States has become an increasingly pressing issue in recent years. The upward trend is alarming, and policymakers are focusing their efforts on reducing the death toll. In this study, we examine gun violence in a changing world. Our primary focus is the relationship between heatwaves—direct consequences of climate change in intensity and frequency—and gun violence. We investigate these relationships within a potential outcomes framework, defining causal effects for areas that have experienced a heatwave and those potentially subject to spillover effects.
We estimate the causal effect by introducing a spatially augmented version of the synthetic control method, leveraging the spatial information in the data to improve the interpretability of our estimates and reduce their variability. We employ a Bayesian regression approach to penalize the selection of more distant control units, within a semiparametric framework that balances unobserved spatial confounding.
Our findings contribute substantively by clarifying how environmental factors relate to gun violence, and methodologically by naturally extending the synthetic control method to spatial data.