ESSAYS ON THE DETERMINANTS OF DOMESTIC TERRORISM AND POLICY RESPONSES

Abstract

This thesis consists of three chapters. In chapter 1, I survey the existing work in the discipline of terrorism and conclude that terrorism is determined by multiple socio-economic factors and impacts the economic and political climate. In chapter 2, we analyse whether "ethnic tensions" contribute to the incidence of domestic terrorism, using a panel of 56 developing countries from 1997 to 2013, and estimate a zero-inflated negative binomial model. The results document that higher "ethnic tensions" are significantly associated with a higher incidence of domestic terrorist attacks, and related casualties. In chapter 3, we investigate whether the public order and safety spending (POS) has an association with the incidence of domestic terrorism, using a panel of 52 developing countries from 1997 to 2012, and estimate a Tobit model. We conclude that POS is not associated with the occurrence of domestic terrorist incidents, but has a significant association with related casualties.