IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/defpea/v20y2009i3p193-213.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Applying Modern Portfolio Theory To The Analysis Of Terrorism. Computing The Set Of Attack Method Combinations From Which The Rational Terrorist Group Will Choose In Order To Maximise Injuries And Fatalities

Author

Listed:
  • Peter Phillips

Abstract

In this paper, terrorism is analysed using the tools of modern portfolio theory. This approach permits the analysis of the returns that a terrorist group can expect from their activities as well as the risk they face. The analysis sheds new light on the nature of the terrorist group's (attack method) choice set and the efficiency properties of that set. If terrorist groups are, on average, more risk averse, the economist can expect the terrorist group to exhibit a bias towards bombing and armed attack. In addition, even the riskiest (from the terrorist group's point of view) combinations of attack methods have maximum expected returns of less than 70 injuries and fatalities per attack per year.

Suggested Citation

  • Peter Phillips, 2009. "Applying Modern Portfolio Theory To The Analysis Of Terrorism. Computing The Set Of Attack Method Combinations From Which The Rational Terrorist Group Will Choose In Order To Maximise Injuries And Fat," Defence and Peace Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(3), pages 193-213.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:defpea:v:20:y:2009:i:3:p:193-213
    DOI: 10.1080/10242690801923124
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10242690801923124
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/10242690801923124?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. S. Browne & M. A. Milevsky & T. S. Salisbury, 2003. "Asset Allocation and the Liquidity Premium for Illiquid Annuities," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 70(3), pages 509-526, September.
    2. Drakos, Konstantinos, 2004. "Terrorism-induced structural shifts in financial risk: airline stocks in the aftermath of the September 11th terror attacks," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 435-446, June.
    3. Eldor, Rafi & Melnick, Rafi, 2004. "Financial markets and terrorism," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 367-386, June.
    4. Sandler, Todd & Enders, Walter, 2004. "An economic perspective on transnational terrorism," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 301-316, June.
    5. Chen, Andrew H. & Siems, Thomas F., 2004. "The effects of terrorism on global capital markets," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 349-366, June.
    6. Harry Markowitz, 1952. "Portfolio Selection," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 7(1), pages 77-91, March.
    7. William F. Sharpe, 1964. "Capital Asset Prices: A Theory Of Market Equilibrium Under Conditions Of Risk," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 19(3), pages 425-442, September.
    8. Merton, Robert C, 1969. "Lifetime Portfolio Selection under Uncertainty: The Continuous-Time Case," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 51(3), pages 247-257, August.
    9. Charles H. Anderton & John R. Carter, 2006. "Applying Intermediate Microeconomics to Terrorism," The Journal of Economic Education, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(4), pages 442-458, October.
    10. Enders, Walter, 2007. "Terrorism: An Empirical Analysis," Handbook of Defense Economics, in: Keith Hartley & Todd Sandler (ed.), Handbook of Defense Economics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 26, pages 815-866, Elsevier.
    11. Enders, Walter & Sandler, Todd, 1993. "The Effectiveness of Antiterrorism Policies: A Vector-Autoregression-Intervention Analysis," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 87(4), pages 829-844, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Phillips Peter J. & Pohl Gabriela, 2018. "The Deferral of Attacks: SP/A Theory as a Model of Terrorist Choice when Losses Are Inevitable," Open Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 1(1), pages 71-85, February.
    2. Samrat Chatterjee & Stephen C. Hora & Heather Rosoff, 2015. "Portfolio Analysis of Layered Security Measures," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 35(3), pages 459-475, March.
    3. Phillips Peter J, 2011. "Lone Wolf Terrorism," Peace Economics, Peace Science, and Public Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 17(1), pages 1-31, March.
    4. repec:bpj:pepspp:v:18:y:2012:i:3:p:3:n:9 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Zhang, Jing & Zhuang, Jun, 2019. "Modeling a multi-target attacker-defender game with multiple attack types," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 185(C), pages 465-475.
    6. Peter Phillips, 2011. "Terrorists’ Equilibrium Choices When No Attack Method is Riskless," Atlantic Economic Journal, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 39(2), pages 129-141, June.
    7. Phillips Peter J, 2012. "The lone wolf terrorist: sprees of violence," Peace Economics, Peace Science, and Public Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 18(3), pages 1-3, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Konstantinos Drakos, 2009. "Cross-Country Stock Market Reactions to Major Terror Events: The Role of Risk Perception," Economics of Security Working Paper Series 16, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    2. Bruno S. Frey & Simon Luechinger & Alois Stutzer, 2007. "Calculating Tragedy: Assessing The Costs Of Terrorism," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 21(1), pages 1-24, February.
    3. Friedrich Schneider & Tilman Brück & Daniel Meierrieks, 2010. "The Economics of Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism: A Survey (Part II)," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1050, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    4. Ruiz Estrada, Mario Arturo & Koutronas, Evangelos, 2016. "Terrorist attack assessment: Paris November 2015 and Brussels March 2016," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 38(3), pages 553-571.
    5. Kollias, Christos & Manou, Efthalia & Papadamou, Stephanos & Stagiannis, Apostolos, 2011. "Stock markets and terrorist attacks: Comparative evidence from a large and a small capitalization market," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 27(S1), pages 64-77.
    6. Iatridis, George, 2012. "Terrorist attacks and company financial numbers: Evidence on earnings management and value relevance from Madrid, London and Istanbul," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 26(2), pages 204-220.
    7. Kollias, Christos & Papadamou, Stephanos & Stagiannis, Apostolos, 2011. "Terrorism and capital markets: The effects of the Madrid and London bomb attacks," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 20(4), pages 532-541, October.
    8. Konstantinos Drakos, 2010. "The determinants of terrorist shocks' cross‐market transmission," Journal of Risk Finance, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 11(2), pages 147-163, March.
    9. Tilman Br�ck & Bengt-Arne Wickstr�m, 2004. "The Economic Consequences of Terror: A Brief Survey," HiCN Working Papers 03, Households in Conflict Network.
    10. Giofré, Maela, 2014. "Domestic investor protection and foreign portfolio investment," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 355-371.
    11. Schneider, Friedrich, 2010. "The (Hidden) Financial Flows of Terrorist and Organized Crime Organizations: A Literature Review and Some Preliminary Empirical Results," IZA Discussion Papers 4860, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    12. Mrs. Oana M Croitoru & Mr. R. B. Johnston, 2005. "The Impact of Terrorism on Financial Markets," IMF Working Papers 2005/060, International Monetary Fund.
    13. Lin, Wen-chang & Lu, Jin-ray, 2012. "Risky asset allocation and consumption rule in the presence of background risk and insurance markets," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(1), pages 150-158.
    14. Nicholas Apergis & Matteo Bonato & Rangan Gupta & Clement Kyei, 2016. "Does Geopolitical Risks Predict Stock Returns and Volatility of Leading Defense Companies? Evidence from a Nonparametric Approach," Working Papers 201671, University of Pretoria, Department of Economics.
    15. David S. Jones & V. Vance Roley, 1981. "Bliss Points in Mean-Variance Portfolio Models," NBER Technical Working Papers 0019, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Pınar Derin-Güre, 2014. "Development, immigration and terrorism," Chapters, in: Robert E.B. Lucas (ed.), International Handbook on Migration and Economic Development, chapter 15, pages 425-462, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    17. Konstantinos Drakos, 2011. "Security Economics: A Guide For Data Availability And Needs," Defence and Peace Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 22(2), pages 147-159.
    18. Bilel Jarraya & Abdelfettah Bouri, 2013. "A Theoretical Assessment on Optimal Asset Allocations in Insurance Industry," International Journal of Finance & Banking Studies, Center for the Strategic Studies in Business and Finance, vol. 2(4), pages 30-44, October.
    19. Penaranda, Francisco, 2007. "Portfolio choice beyond the traditional approach," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 24481, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    20. Chaudhry, Naukhaiz & Roubaud, David & Akhter, Waheed & Shahbaz, Muhammad, 2018. "Impact of terrorism on stock markets: Empirical evidence from the SAARC region," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 26(C), pages 230-234.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:defpea:v:20:y:2009:i:3:p:193-213. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/GDPE20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.