Attack Assignments in Terror Organizations and The Productivity of Suicide Bombers

Efraim Benmelech and Claude Berrebi ()

No 12910, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This paper studies the relation between human capital of suicide bombers and outcomes of their suicide attacks. We argue that human capital is an important factor in the production of terrorism, and that if terrorists behave rationally we should observe that more able suicide bombers are assigned to more important targets. We use a unique data set detailing the biographies of Palestinian suicide bombers, the targets they attack, and the number of people that they kill and injure to validate the theoretical predictions and estimate the returns to human capital in suicide bombing. Our empirical analysis suggests that older and more educated suicide bombers are being assigned by their terror organization to more important targets. We find that more educated and older suicide bombers are less likely to fail in their mission, and are more likely to cause increased casualties when they attack.

JEL-codes: D23 J2 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007-02
Note: LS POL
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Published as Benmelech, Efraim and Claude Berrebi. “Human Capital and the Productivity of Suicide Bombers," Journal of Economic Perspectives 21, 3 (2007): 223-238.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w12910.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:12910

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w12910

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().