Protecting Cultural Monuments Against Terrorism

Bruno Frey and Dominic Rohner

No 257, IEW - Working Papers from Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich

Abstract: Famous cultural monuments are often regarded as unique icons, making them an attractive target for terrorists. Despite huge military and police outlays, terrorist attacks on important monuments can hardly be avoided. We argue that an effective strategy for discouraging terrorist attacks on iconic monuments is for the government to show a firm commitment to swift reconstruction. Using a simple game-theoretic model, we demonstrate how a credible claim to rebuild any cultural monuments destroyed discourages terrorist attacks by altering the terrorists� expectations and by increasing the government�s reputation costs if they fail to rebuild.

Keywords: Terrorism; Culture; Monuments; Counter-terrorism; Deterrence (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D74 H56 Z10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cul and nep-pbe
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/52147/1/iewwp257.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: PROTECTING CULTURAL MONUMENTS AGAINST TERRORISM (2007)
Working Paper: Protecting Cultural Monuments Against Terrorism (2005)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zur:iewwpx:257

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