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

Freytag A.; Kruger J.J.; Meierrieks D.; Schneider F.

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

Date

2011-10-13

Authors

Freytag A.

Kruger J.J.

Meierrieks D.

Schneider F.

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. © 2011.

Citation

European Journal of Political Economy
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