The Threat of Terrorism: The Perspective of a Policy-Maker

This note defines and analyzes the most important issues concerning decisionmaking about human-induced insecurities such as terrorism and organized crime from the perspective of a policymaker. By means of modeling the policymakers trade-o_ between the e_ectiveness and costs of policy measures targeted at reducing the threat of terrorism, we aim at helping to understand the role economic research can take to enable e_cient decisionmaking in the context of human-induced insecurities in general and terrorism in particular.