Economic growth in developing countries prevents terrorism

This study provides new and interesting insights for two reasons. First, the author introduces a distinction between agricultural and industrial economic growth, as opposed to a single economic output indicator. Choi notes that “only some forms of economic growth are associated with terrorist activity, and even then, they only correlate with particular forms of terrorist attacks.” Second, the study measures the impact of economic growth on three expressions of terrorism, as opposed to a single, homogeneous indicator of terrorist violence. Importantly, previous studies focus on one modality of terrorism, “under the implicit assumption that terrorist groups will use the same conventional attack tactics despite the continuously enhanced security environment.” The author distinguishes between international terrorism — involving at least two different nationals — domestic terrorism — wherein the victims and perpetrators are from the venue country — and suicide attacks, when a terrorist purposefully dies in the process of carrying out his or her mission. The study’s findings include: Higher industrial economic growth is associated with lower levels of international and domestic terrorist violence: “It appears that if industrial growth increases by 1 percent, the percent change in the incidence rate of domestic terrorism is a 1 percent decrease while holding the other variables constant; for the incidence rate of international terrorism, there is a 1 percent decrease.” Growth in the agricultural sector, by contrast, does not rise to statistical significance and may have “no bearing on terrorist behavior.”