Fighting Terrorism at Source

This book offers a unique and insightful econometric evaluation of the policies used to fight transnational terrorism between 1990 and 2014. It uses the tools of modern economics, game theory and structural econometrics to analyze the roles of foreign aid, educational capital, and military intervention.

Jean-Paul Azam and Veronique Thelen analyze panel data over 25 years across 124 countries. They prove that foreign aid plays a key role in inducing recipient governments to protect the donors' political and economic interests within their sphere of influence. Demonstrating that countries endowed with better educational capital export fewer terrorist attacks, they also illustrate that, in contrast, military intervention is counter-productive in abating terrorism. Recognizing the strides taken by the Obama administration to increase the role of foreign aid and reduce the use of military interventions, this book shows the significant impact this has had in reducing the number of transnational terrorist attacks per source country, and suggests further developments in this vein.

Practical and timely, this book will be of particular interest to students and scholars of economics and political science, as well as those working on the wider issue of terrorism. Presenting a series of new findings, the book will also appeal to international policy makers and government officials.