The Origins of Terrorism - Cross-Country Estimates on Socio-Economic Determinants of Terrorism

Andreas Freytag (), Jens Krüger (), Daniel Meierrieks and Friedrich Schneider ()

No 19, Working Papers CIE from Paderborn University, CIE Center for International Economics

Abstract: To expand our knowledge about an appropriate anti-terror strategy, it is indispensable to assess the underlying causes of terror. We examine social and economic conditions in the country of origin of terrorist attacks, claiming that low opportunity costs of terror, e.g. approximated as slow growth and poor institutions raise the propensity of terror and the willingness in the population to support terror. Using a mixed effects Poisson regression model, we are able to show that unfortunate socio-economic conditions in a country are suitable to reduce the opportunity cost for potential terrorists and increase the likelihood of terrorist attacks originating from a specific country. Interestingly, this effect is relevant after a certain level of development has been reached. We therefore distinguish between the OECD, Europe and Islamic countries.

Keywords: terror attacks; openness; discrete choice analysis; institutions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C25 F15 P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30 pages
Date: 2009-01
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
http://groups.uni-paderborn.de/wp-wiwi/RePEc/pdf/ciepap/WP19.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The origins of terrorism: Cross-country estimates of socio-economic determinants of terrorism (2011)
Working Paper: The Origins of Terrorism: Cross-Country Estimates on Socio-Economic Determinants of Terrorism (2011)
Working Paper: The Origins of Terrorism: Cross-Country Estimates on Socio-economic Determinants of Terrorism (2010)
Working Paper: The Origins of Terrorism - Cross-Country Estimates on Socio-Economic Determinants of Terrorism (2009)
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:pdn:ciepap:19

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers CIE from Paderborn University, CIE Center for International Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by WP-WiWi-Info ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ) and ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).