with Martin
Gassebner
What are the main causes of international terrorism? The lessons from the
surge of academic research that
followed 9/11 remain elusive. The careful investigation of the relative
roles of economic and political conditions
did little to change the fact that existing econometric estimates diverge
in size, sign and significance. In this
paper we present a new rationale (the escalation effect) stressing domestic
political instability as the main
reason for international terrorism. Econometric evidence from a panel of
more than 130 countries (yearly from
1968 to 2003) shows this to be a much more promising avenue for future
research than the available alternatives.
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