Citation

Jones BF, Olken BA. NBER Work. Pap. Ser. 2007; 2007(online): w13102.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2007, National Bureau of Economic Research)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Assassinations are a persistent feature of the political landscape. Using a new data set of assassination attempts on all world leaders from 1875 to 2004, we exploit inherent randomness in the success or failure of assassination attempts to identify assassination's effects. We find that, on average, successful assassinations of autocrats produce sustained moves toward democracy. We also find that assassinations affect the intensity of small-scale conflicts. The results document a contemporary source of institutional change, inform theories of conflict, and show that small sources of randomness can have a pronounced effect on history.