Citation

Freytag A, Krüger JJ, Meierrieks D, Schneider F. Eur. J. Polit. Econ. 2011; 27(Suppl 1): S5-S16.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2011, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2011.06.009

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Prior research has concluded that socio-economic development does not significantly affect terrorism. We take an alternative view. First, we note that a country's socio-economic circumstances affect terrorists' behavior through terrorism's opportunity costs. We argue that this reasoning also holds for the case of supreme value terrorism. Then, we run a series of negative binomial regressions for 110 countries between 1971 and 2007 to test the hypothesis that poor socio-economic development is conducive to terrorism. We find that socio-economic variables indeed matter to terrorism, contrary to other results. Our findings imply that countries can benefit from economic development and growth in terms of a reduction in terrorism.