%0 Journal Article
%T The origins of terrorism: Cross-country estimates of socio-economic determinants of terrorism
%J European journal of political economy
%D 2011
%A Freytag, Andreas
%A Krüger, Jens J.
%A Meierrieks, Daniel
%A Schneider, Friedrich
%V 27
%N Suppl 1
%P S5-S16
%X 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.<p />
%G 
%I Elsevier Publishing
%@ 0176-2680
%U http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2011.06.009