On the human consequences of terrorism

Public Choice - Terrorist attacks are regarded as low-probability, highly consequential events. What, exactly, are the significant effects of terrorism? This paper presents a cross-sectional...     

Measuring social capital and its consequences

If social capital is understood to be a resource that can facilitate the attainment of a communitys goals, then it may be searched for in its institutions, in its patterns of culture, in its modes of communication and association, or in its shared psychosocial characteristics as expressed in qualities such as trust, cooperativeness, or initiative. This paper focuses on the latter expressions of social capital, and especially on efforts to measure its presence in large-scale national populations. Evidence from Hofstedes sample of 40 nations shows that the average strength of individualism in each national population was strongly correlated with measures of income equality and press freedom; and from Ingleharts sample of more than 40 nations that when positive social values such as trust are widely shared they produce desirable features of social organization such as economic growth and stable democratic government. The paper considers how far such psychosocial characteristics of national populations are stable or variable. It concludes with a discussion of the uses policymakers make of these distinctive elements of social capital.     

Electoral terms and terrorism

Many terror attacks occur at the beginning of electoral terms. We present a game theoretical model with incomplete information to account for this empirical pattern. Both terrorists and governments can be of weak or strong types. We find that the risk of terror attacks is highest at the beginning of electoral terms, because striking early allows the terrorists to collect valuable information about the government’s type, and also because terrorists know that even initially weak governments sometimes retaliate to show toughness closer to an upcoming election. The model’s predictions are consistent with anecdotal evidence.     

Nuclear consequences of the welfare state revisited: Danger in the data

My thanks to Eric Noble for computational assistance.     

Catastrophe risk,insurance and terrorism

This article empirically investigates how the terrorist activity of September 11, 2001, was addressed by the insurance industry and government in the United States. It shows that the insurance system worked reasonably well in compensating losses suffered, albeit with various tribulations. It also demonstrates that the insurance industry, along with government as the ultimate risk manager, imaginatively reconfigured markets to continue terrorism insurance coverage in many contexts. The findings challenge many of Ulrich Beck’s contentions about catastrophe risks and insurability. At the same time, they indicate the fragility of the insurance system. Insurers’ perceptions and decisions about uncertainty – with potential for windfall profits as well as catastrophic losses – create crises in insurance availability and promote new forms of inequality and exclusion. Hence, while the insurance industry is a central bulwark against uncertainty, insurers can also play a key role in fostering it.     

Designing real terrorism futures

In July 2003, the Policy Analysis Market (PAM) was described as terrorism futures, and immediately cancelled. While PAM was not in fact designed to be terrorism futures, I here consider five design issues with implementing and using real terrorism futures: combinatorics, manipulation, moral hazard, hiding prices, and decision selection bias. As neither these nor other problems seem insurmountable, terrorism futures appears to be a technically realistic possibility.     

A law and economics perspective on terrorism

This paper reviews the existing law and economics literature on crime, noting where various models might apply to the terror context. Specifically, it focuses on two strands of the literature, deterrence and incapacitation. It considers anti-terror measures enacted by different countries, highlighting how the details of the laws correspond to the insights from economic models of crime. In conclusion, the paper proposes an efficient sorting mechanism in which individuals will be provided with incentives to reveal their type to law enforcement authorities.     

ASEAN's norm adherence and its unintended consequences in HADR and SAR operations

This paper examines the effects and expressions of norm compliance in Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the ‘unintended consequences’ arising from such compliance. This is done through an analysis of ASEAN's responses in humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR) efforts in the Typhoon Haiyan disaster and in the search for missing flight MH370. It argues that the lethargic ASEAN responses in the Haiyan disaster and the uncoordinated search efforts for missing flight MH370 are unintended outcomes arising from norm adherence specifically to the norms of ‘respect for sovereignty’ and ‘consensual decision-making’ which constrained the range of ASEAN responses.     

Party leaders and voter responses to political terrorism

Public Choice - In this article, we study the political implications of terrorism rooted in extremist political ideologies. Our data uniquely allow studying the potential role of party leader...     

International political system, supreme values and terrorism

Terrorism is becoming a weapon of ever increasing importance to reach certain ends, given the potential of mass destruction available to leading international powers and the rise of one superpower dominating the international system. In most cases terrorism is driven by an ideology comprising a world view with supreme values. Since these values are absolutely true to believers, they have to be preferred to everything, so that terrorists are required to sacrifice not only the lives of others but also their own. It is therefore difficult to prevent this kind of terrorism. But the threatening damages can be mitigated by economic, technological and political decentralization. In the long run, it is even more important to win the spiritual fight. This can be done by starting from the fact that believers in ideologies whose supreme values are conflicting, can only live together peacefully, if they accept that each individual has the right to choose his or her own belief. A corresponding education has to prevent fundamentalist instruction and to inculcate the basic rules of a free society.