The impact of terrorism and conflicts on growth in Asia, 1970- 2004

This paper quantifies the impact of terrorism and conflicts on income per capita growth in Asia for 1970-2004. Our panel estimations show that transnational terrorist attacks had a significant growth-limiting effect. An additional terrorist incident per million persons reduces gross domestic product (GDP) per capita growth by about 1.5%. In populous countries, many additional attacks are needed to achieve such a large impact. Transnational terrorism reduces growth by crowding in government expenditures. Unlike developing countries, developed countries are able to absorb terrorism without displaying adverse economic consequences; an internal conflict has the greatest growth concern, about twice that of transnational terrorism. Conflict variables are associated with smaller investment shares and increased government spending, with the crowding in of government spending being the dominant influence. For developing Asian countries, intrastate and interstate wars have a much greater impact than terrorism does on the crowding-in of government spending. When regime types-democratic and autocratic-are taken into account, in our research, we found that the precision of the estimates increases with the increasing significance of transnational terrorist attacks. Policy recommendations indicate the need for rich Asian countries to assist their poorer neighbors in coping with the negative growth consequences of political violence. Failure to assist may result in region-wide repercussions. This is particularly relevant as production becomes fragmented in Asia in order to profit from comparative advantage and as regional infrastructure networks link Asia to exploit scale economies. In the latter case, conflict and terrorism in one country can create bottlenecks with region-wide economic consequences. Moreover, prime-target Western countries-e.g., the United States and the United Kingdom-have a responsibility to bolster Asian defenses against terrorism as attacks against Western interests have been shifted, in part, to Asian venues since the 9/11 attacks in the United States. The Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) and European Union link can assist with coordinating efforts to quell conflicts and eliminate terrorism, but this requires putting recent declarations into practice. The Asian Development Bank and the World Bank could play pivotal roles, especially after a conflict ends, to channel aid for reconstruction so that once-embattled countries can recover rapidly. Nongovernmental organizations and the United Nations could also assist in this post-conflict recovery. The Asian Development Band and ASEAN could coordinate and fund counterterrorism spending to curb overspending on defensive measures and bolster under-spending on proactive measures. The United Nations could assist in peacekeeping operations for internal conflicts

To pay or not: game theoretic models of ransomware

Ransomware is a type of malware that encrypts files and demands a ransom from victims. It can be viewed as a form of kidnapping in which the criminal takes control of the victim’s files with the objective of financial gain. In this article, we review and develop the game theoretic literature on kidnapping in order to gain insight on ransomware. The prior literature on kidnapping has largely focused on political or terrorist hostage taking. We demonstrate, however, that key models within the literature can be adapted to give critical new insight on ransomware. We primarily focus on two models. The first gives insight on the optimal ransom that criminals should charge. The second gives insight on the role of deterrence through preventative measures. A key insight from both models will be the importance of spillover effects across victims. We will argue that such spillovers point to the need for some level of outside intervention, by governments or otherwise, to tackle ransomware

Al Qaeda at the bar: coordinating ideologues and mercenaries in terrorist organizations

Most terrorist groups have limited lifespans. A number of scholars and casual observers have noted that terrorist organizations often are comprised of two types of participants: ideologues or "true believers" dedicated to the group's cause, and mercenaries, who are adept at raising money through illegal means. The latter are interested primarily in their personal gains and have relatively little ideological commitment. Terrorist groups need both participants in order to function effectively. The purpose of the study is to understand the impact of communication on the compositions of terrorist groups. Three experimental treatments consider a coordination problem, and focus on the behavior of the mercenaries. Participants choose whether or not to participate in a terrorist attack. Payoffs are U-shaped in the number of participants, and increase with the number of successful attacks. The treatments allow communication between a leader and frontline fighters ("leader" treatment) or among the frontline fighters themselves ("communication" treatment). In the first treatment, a group leader can post messages to the members, which has a 19 % coordination success rate. For the communication treatment, all participants can post messages anonymously to each other, which yields a 27 % coordination success rate. By contrast, the baseline ("no communication" treatment) shows a success rate of 11 %. We conclude from our experimental evidence that disrupting communications among the frontline fighters is more effective in terminating terrorist organizations

Fiscal Transparency, Elections and Public Employment: Evidence from the OECD

There is considerable variation in levels and changes in public employment within and between developed democracies. This article highlights the importance of fiscal transparency in determining changes in public employment. It argues that economic growth increases public employment under low fiscal transparency and that this effect is strongest in years of election. These hypotheses are tested on a panel of 20 OECD countries from 1995 to 2010. The analyses show substantial evidence in favor of the arguments. Fiscal transparency lowers the positive effect of growth on public employment, a relationship, which is most robust in election years

Do Terrorist Attacks leave an identifiable ‘fingerprint’ on international tourist arrival?

This article empirically examines the postulated effects of at least a single terrorist attack on the measure of monthly international arrivals. The study uses the tsoutliers R package to detect outliers in time series data following terrorist attacks in five destinations. The contribution of this paper is found in the methodological approach that was implemented consistently across all five destinations. The findings suggest that there is no evidence to support the view that there is a consistent disturbance from a well-fitted time series (a data ‘fingerprint’) created by a terrorist attack across the five different destinations or even, in at least one case, in the same destination, at different times

Fighting Terrorism: Empirics on Policy Harmonisation

This paper models the feasibility of common policy initiatives against global terrorism, as well as timelines for their enforcement. The empirical evidence is based on 78 developing countries for the period 1984–2008. Domestic, transnational, unclear and total terrorism variables are used. Absolute (or unconditional) and conditional catch‐ups are estimated using Generalised Method of Moments. We establish consistently that, the rate of catch‐up is higher in domestic terrorism relative to transnational terrorism. The time to full catch‐up required for the implementation of common policies without distinction of nationality is found to be in a horizon of 13–20 years for domestic terrorism and 24–28 years for transnational terrorism. Hence, from a projection date of 2009, in spite of decreasing cross‐country differences in terrorists’ attacks, there is still a long way to go before feasible common policy initiatives can be fully implemented without distinction of nationality. The paper is original by its contribution to the empirics of conflict resolution through decreasing cross‐country differences in terrorism tendencies. Policy implications are discussed

Does Property Ownership by Women Reduce Domestic Violence? A Case of Latin America

It is widely believed that empowering women via various material means increases women’s outside options and, thereby, makes them less vulnerable to intimate partner violence. However, the effect of such empowerment on domestic violence could be subtle particularly in countries with pre-existing high tolerance to violence, weak law enforcement and male institutional domination. Using cross-sectional household-level survey data for Latin American countries, we test the effect of property ownership by women on domestic violence. The results show that a woman’s sole property ownership is not associated with less domestic violence against her; sometimes the correlation is even positive. However, married women who co-own the property are less likely to face domestic abuse by husbands

Reevaluating terrorism and economic growth: dynamic panel analysis and cross-sectional dependence

Abstract Contrary to the extant literature, this paper shows that the impact of terrorism on economic growth is insignificant in five regional samples. These results follow when Nickell bias and cross-sectional dependence are taken into account. Previous studies have not properly adjusted for these biases. Our provocative findings are robust to alternative measures of terrorism (i.e., domestic, transnational, and total) and to alternative specifications of terrorism (e.g., level, first differenced, and attacks per capita). These findings are also robust to the inclusion of investment and population growth. Moreover, we find that the various forms of terrorism do not affect consumption, investment, and government expenditures

Introducing Extended Data on Terrorist Groups (EDTG), 1970 to 2016

This article introduces an extended data set of 760 terrorist groups that engaged in attacks during 1970 to 2016. Unlike most extant group data sets, the extended data on terrorist groups (EDTG) is not tied to terrorist groups and attacks listed in the RAND terrorism data; rather, EDTG is linked to terrorist groups and attacks given in the Global Terrorism Database. Terrorist groups’ variables in EDTG include ideology, main goals, start date, duration, base country, attack diversity, peak size, alternative endings (if relevant), and others. We display interesting features of EDTG through a series of tables and figures. Our EDTG-based survival analysis is at odds with some of the literature: for example, the demise of a leader and a larger share of transnational terrorist attacks increase the group’s odds of failure. After 2001, religious terrorist groups are more resilient than those with other ideologies. We also analyze terrorist group lethality and productivity

Parental Transfers and Fertility: Does the Recipient's Gender Matter?

This paper examines the role of parental transfers on family size. We introduce a simple theoretical model of fertility decision where preferences towards children may differ between female and male spouses. Parental transfers increase both the household income and the bargaining power of the recipient spouse. Therefore, transfers from wife’s and husband’s parents may have dissimilar effects on the number of children. We empirically test and confirm this hypothesis using a unique household-level data for Japan. In particular, received transfers from the wife’s parents reduce the demand for children. In contrast, both received and expected transfers from the husband’s parents increase the demand for children. These results hold important policy implications