Present anti-terrorist policy concentrates almost exclusively on deterrence. It seeks to fend off terrorism by raising the cost of undertaking terrorist acts. This paper argues that deterrence policy is less effective than generally thought and induces in some cases even more terrorism. This is,...

Famous cultural monuments are often regarded as unique icons, making them an attractive target for terrorists. Despite huge military and police outlays, terrorist attacks on important monuments can hardly be avoided. We argue that an effective strategy for discouraging terrorist attacks on...

This paper discusses a novel approach to elicit people’s preferences for public goods, namely the life satisfaction approach. Reported subjective well-being data are used to directly evaluate utility consequences of public goods. The strengths of this approach are compared to traditional...

The trends and consequences of terrorist activities are often captured by counting the number of incidents and casualties. More recently, the effects of terrorist acts on various aspects of the economy have been analyzed. These costs are surveyed and put in perspective. As economic consequences...

Deterrence has been a crucial element in fighting terrorism, both in actual politics and rational choice analyses of terrorism. But there are superior strategies to deterrence. One is to make terrorist attacks less attractive. Another to raise the opportunity cost – rather than the material...

Terrorism will be high on the political agenda for many years to come. Various policies are open to a government fighting terrorism but, in any case, considerable costs are involved. In the competition for political support, the costs and benefits of anti-terrorism policies will be debated....

Deterrence has been a crucial element in fighting terrorism, both in politics and in rational choice analyses of terrorism. However, there are two strategies that are superior to deterrence. The first one is to make terrorist attacks less devastating and less attractive to terrorists through...

We study the effect of civil conflict on social capital, focusing on the experience of Uganda during the last decade. Using individual and county-level data, we document causal effects on trust and ethnic identity of an exogenous outburst of ethnic conflicts in 2002-04. We exploit two waves of...

Since World War II there have been about fifty episodes of large-scale mass killings of civilians and massive forced displacements. They were usually meticulously planned and independent of military goals. We provide a model where conflict onset, conflict intensity and the decision to commit...

Historical evidence suggests that poor population groups are more likely to engage in conflict. We construct a theoretical model of the choice between appropriation and production. Fully specified production functions allow for both symmetrical outcomes and for introducing inequalities in...