The Day after the Bomb: Well-being Effects of Terrorist Attacks in Europe

Emilio Colombo, Valentina Rotondi and Luca Stanca

No 416, Working Papers from University of Milano-Bicocca, Department of Economics

Abstract: We study the non-monetary costs of the terrorist attacks occurred in France, Belgium and Germany between 2010 and 2017. Using four waves of the European Social Survey, we find that individuals' well-being is significantly reduced in the aftermath of a terrorist attack. We explore possible mechanisms for this effect, finding that terrorist attacks determine a reduction in generalized trust, institutional trust, satisfaction with democracy and satisfaction with the government. Terrorist attacks are also found to increase negative attitudes towards migrants and perceived discrimination. However, contrary to expectations, the negative impact of terrorism on well-being is less strong for Muslim immigrants. We posit that this occurs because immigrants benefit more than natives from the institutional reaction following the attacks.

Keywords: Terrorism; Well-being; Happiness; Democracy; Trust. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H56 I31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 23
Date: 2019-07-17, Revised 2019-07-17
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur and nep-hap
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://repec.dems.unimib.it/repec/pdf/mibwpaper416.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The Day After the Bomb: Well-Being Effects of Terrorist Attacks in Europe (2022)
Working Paper: The Day after the Bomb: Well-being Effects of Terrorist Attacks in Europe (2019)
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:mib:wpaper:416

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from University of Milano-Bicocca, Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Matteo Pelagatti (matteo.pelagatti@unimib.it).