Terrorism and National Morality

Abstract

This paper empirically investigates whether there is a negative relationship between the impact of terrorism in a country and national morality. A negative relationship between terrorism and national morality is predicted to exist, because it is reasoned that, in general, greater national morality leads to higher individual and social costs of terrorism, and to lower individual and social benefits from terrorism. Given the standard neoclassical assumption of rationality, an increase in the cost benefit ratio of terrorism due to increased national morality means that, with increased national morality, individuals will rationally choose to engage in less terrorism.The paper uses cross country regression analysis on contemporary data to test these ideas. It regresses the impact of terrorism on national morality and other variables. The results of the empirics of the paper are consistent with the key theoretical hypothesis. They show that the impact of terrorism is negatively associated with national morality.