I Hope I Die before I Get Old

Thomas Apolte

Defence and Peace Economics, 2020, vol. 31, issue 5, 469-484

Abstract: We explore the supply side of the market for suicide attackers. While the strategic edge of suicide attacks for certain terrorist organizations has been thoroughly explored, the motivation of the suppliers remains quite mysterious. We develop a model of the supply of suicide attacks, the motivation of which is expressive but time inconsistent. The model implies terrorist organizations to provide a commitment device in exchange for the ‘services’ of those suicide attackers that do not suffer from any mental or physical burden of life. By contrast, suicide attackers that do suffer from some sufficiently severe burden of life are not reliant on any commitment device and should therefore be expected to more frequently act as lonesome-wolf attackers.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/10242694.2019.1582167 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:defpea:v:31:y:2020:i:5:p:469-484

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/GDPE20

DOI: 10.1080/10242694.2019.1582167

Access Statistics for this article

Defence and Peace Economics is currently edited by Professor Keith Hartley

More articles in Defence and Peace Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().