The origins of terrorism: Cross-country estimates of socio-economic determinants of terrorism

Andreas Freytag (), Jens Krüger (), Daniel Meierrieks and Friedrich Schneider ()

European Journal of Political Economy, 2011, vol. 27, issue S1, S5-S16

Abstract: Prior research has concluded that socio-economic development does not significantly affect terrorism. We take an alternative view. First, we note that a country's socio-economic circumstances affect terrorists' behavior through terrorism's opportunity costs. We argue that this reasoning also holds for the case of supreme value terrorism. Then, we run a series of negative binomial regressions for 110 countries between 1971 and 2007 to test the hypothesis that poor socio-economic development is conducive to terrorism. We find that socio-economic variables indeed matter to terrorism, contrary to other results. Our findings imply that countries can benefit from economic development and growth in terms of a reduction in terrorism.

Keywords: Terrorism; Development; Opportunity costs of violence; Negative binomial regression (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C25 D74 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (124)

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Related works:
Working Paper: The Origins of Terrorism: Cross-Country Estimates on Socio-Economic Determinants of Terrorism (2011)
Working Paper: The Origins of Terrorism: Cross-Country Estimates on Socio-economic Determinants of Terrorism (2010)
Working Paper: The Origins of Terrorism - Cross-Country Estimates on Socio-Economic Determinants of Terrorism (2009)
Working Paper: The Origins of Terrorism - Cross-Country Estimates on Socio-Economic Determinants of Terrorism (2009)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:poleco:v:27:y:2011:i:s1:p:s5-s16

DOI: 10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2011.06.009

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