Hit or Miss? The Effect of Assassinations on Institutions and War

Benjamin Jones and Benjamin Olken

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, 2009, vol. 1, issue 2, 55-87

Abstract: Assassinations are a persistent feature of the political landscape. Using a new dataset of assassination attempts on all world leaders from 1875 to 2004, we exploit inherent randomness in the success or failure of assassination attempts to identify the effects of assassination. We find that, on average, successful assassinations of autocrats produce sustained moves toward democracy. We also find that assassinations affect the intensity of small-scale conflicts. The results document a contemporary source of institutional change, inform theories of conflict, and show that small sources of randomness can have a pronounced effect on history. (JEL D72, N40, O17)

JEL-codes: D72 N40 O17 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
Note: DOI: 10.1257/mac.1.2.55
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (67)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/mac.1.2.55 (application/pdf)
http://www.aeaweb.org/aej/mac/data/2008-0058_data.zip (application/zip)
Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Hit or Miss? The Effect of Assassinations on Institutions and War (2007)
Working Paper: Hit or Miss? The Effect of Assassinations on Institutions and War (2007)
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:aea:aejmac:v:1:y:2009:i:2:p:55-87

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/subscriptions

Access Statistics for this article

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics is currently edited by Simon Gilchrist

More articles in American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().