This study empirically investigates the impact of group characteristics and host country conditions on the duration and the ending of terrorist organizations and rebel groups. The empirical analysis relies on data for more than 600 armed groups from the Terrorist Organization Profiles, collected...

We examine how external intervention interacts with ethnic polarization to induce rebellion and civil war. Previous literature views polarization as internally produced --- the result of demographic characteristics or inter-group differences made salient by ethnic entrepreneurs. We complement...

Negotiated settlements after civil war are notoriously unstable and often go unimplemented. This is often due to factors such as credible commitment problems, lack of government capacity to implement, or one of the disputants begins a new wave of violence. Mediation is often utilized as means of...

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...

We develop a theory of interstate conflict in which the degree of genealogical relatedness between populations has a positive effect on their conflict propensities because more closely related populations, on average, tend to interact more and develop more disputes over sets of common issues. We...

This paper examines conflicts in which performance is measured by the players' success or failure in multiple component conflicts, commonly termed 'battlefields'. In multi-battlefield conflicts, behavioral linkages across battlefields depend both on the technologies of conflict within each...

A multi-stage model on the course of war is presented: Individual battles are modeled as private value all-pay auctions with asymmetric combatants of two opposing teams. These auctions are placed within a multi-stage framework with a tug-of-war structure. Such framing provides a microfounded...

From time to time, the press reports the disruption of a terrorist plot by means of government agents infiltrating a terrorist network. Terrorists believe they are dealing with co-conspirators only to find they have been dealing with government agents. The problem facing the terrorists is an...

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the insights that might be generated into the nature of ‘lone wolf terrorism’ through the application of economic analysis. Orthodox approaches, particularly (standard) expected utility analysis and game theoretical analysis, are discussed. These...

Along with such factors as declining support, the dismantling of the leadership group and transition into legitimate political engagement there is another factor that is relevant to the decline and fall of terrorist groups. This is the group’s risk aversion. This aspect of the terrorist...