IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/defpea/v28y2017i2p150-164.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Terrorist choice: a stochastic dominance and prospect theory analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Peter J. Phillips
  • Gabriela Pohl

Abstract

The paper explores terrorist choice by applying two well-known theoretical frameworks: stochastic dominance and prospect theory (PT). We analyse each pair of attack methods that can be formed from the RAND-MIPT database and the Global Terrorism Database. Instances of stochastic dominance are identified. PT orderings are computed. Attention is accorded to the identification of ‘trigger points’ and the circumstances that may lead to an increased likelihood that a terrorist will select an attack method associated with a higher expected number of fatalities, i.e. a potentially more damaging attack method.

Suggested Citation

  • Peter J. Phillips & Gabriela Pohl, 2017. "Terrorist choice: a stochastic dominance and prospect theory analysis," Defence and Peace Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 28(2), pages 150-164, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:defpea:v:28:y:2017:i:2:p:150-164
    DOI: 10.1080/10242694.2015.1033888
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/10242694.2015.1033888
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/10242694.2015.1033888?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. Meyer, Jack, 1977. "Choice among distributions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 14(2), pages 326-336, April.
    2. Patrick T. Brandt & Todd Sandler, 2010. "What Do Transnational Terrorists Target? Has It Changed? Are We Safer?," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 54(2), pages 214-236, April.
    3. Tversky, Amos & Kahneman, Daniel, 1992. "Advances in Prospect Theory: Cumulative Representation of Uncertainty," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 5(4), pages 297-323, October.
    4. Han Bleichrodt & Jose Luis Pinto, 2000. "A Parameter-Free Elicitation of the Probability Weighting Function in Medical Decision Analysis," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 46(11), pages 1485-1496, November.
    5. Vijay S. Bawa, 1982. "Research Bibliography---Stochastic Dominance: A Research Bibliography," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 28(6), pages 698-712, June.
    6. Sandler, Todd & Enders, Walter, 2004. "An economic perspective on transnational terrorism," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 301-316, June.
    7. Wolfgang Pesendorfer, 2006. "Behavioral Economics Comes of Age: A Review Essay on Advances in Behavioral Economics," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 44(3), pages 712-721, September.
    8. Camerer, Colin F & Ho, Teck-Hua, 1994. "Violations of the Betweenness Axiom and Nonlinearity in Probability," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 8(2), pages 167-196, March.
    9. Phillips Peter J, 2011. "Lone Wolf Terrorism," Peace Economics, Peace Science, and Public Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 17(1), pages 1-31, March.
    10. Daniel Kahneman & Amos Tversky, 2013. "Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Leonard C MacLean & William T Ziemba (ed.), HANDBOOK OF THE FUNDAMENTALS OF FINANCIAL DECISION MAKING Part I, chapter 6, pages 99-127, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    11. Sergiu Hart, 2011. "Comparing Risks by Acceptance and Rejection," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 119(4), pages 617-638.
    12. Haim Levy, 1992. "Stochastic Dominance and Expected Utility: Survey and Analysis," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 38(4), pages 555-593, April.
    13. Kevin Siqueira & Todd Sandler, 2006. "Terrorists versus the Government," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 50(6), pages 878-898, December.
    14. Rothschild, Michael & Stiglitz, Joseph E., 1971. "Increasing risk II: Its economic consequences," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 3(1), pages 66-84, March.
    15. Luis Braido & Daniel Ferreira, 2006. "Options can induce risk taking for arbitrary preferences," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 27(3), pages 513-522, April.
    16. Todd Sandler & John L. Scott, 1987. "Terrorist Success in Hostage-Taking Incidents," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 31(1), pages 35-53, March.
    17. G. Hanoch & H. Levy, 1969. "The Efficiency Analysis of Choices Involving Risk," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 36(3), pages 335-346.
    18. Meyer, Jack, 1977. "Further Applications of Stochastic Dominance to Mutual Fund Performance," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 12(2), pages 235-242, June.
    19. B. Peter Rosendorff & Todd Sandler, 2004. "Too Much of a Good Thing?," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 48(5), pages 657-671, October.
    20. Walter Enders & Todd Sandler, 2005. "Transnational Terrorism 1968–2000: Thresholds, Persistence, and Forecasts," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 71(3), pages 467-482, January.
    21. Bruno S. Frey & Simon Luechinger, "undated". "How to Fight Terrorism: Alternatives to Deterrence," IEW - Working Papers 137, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich.
    22. Levy, Haim & Wiener, Zvi, 2013. "Prospect theory and utility theory: Temporary versus permanent attitude toward risk," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 1-23.
    23. George Wu & Richard Gonzalez, 1996. "Curvature of the Probability Weighting Function," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 42(12), pages 1676-1690, December.
    24. Christopher K. Butler, 2007. "Prospect Theory and Coercive Bargaining," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 51(2), pages 227-250, April.
    25. Rothschild, Michael & Stiglitz, Joseph E., 1970. "Increasing risk: I. A definition," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 2(3), pages 225-243, September.
    26. Sandler, Todd & Tschirhart, John T. & Cauley, Jon, 1983. "A Theoretical Analysis of Transnational Terrorism," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 77(1), pages 36-54, March.
    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.

    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. 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. Peter Brooks & Simon Peters & Horst Zank, 2014. "Risk behavior for gain, loss, and mixed prospects," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 77(2), pages 153-182, August.
    3. W. Wong & R. Chan, 2008. "Prospect and Markowitz stochastic dominance," Annals of Finance, Springer, vol. 4(1), pages 105-129, January.
    4. Moshe Levy & Haim Levy, 2013. "Prospect Theory: Much Ado About Nothing?," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Leonard C MacLean & William T Ziemba (ed.), HANDBOOK OF THE FUNDAMENTALS OF FINANCIAL DECISION MAKING Part I, chapter 7, pages 129-144, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    5. Thomas Kourouxous & Thomas Bauer, 2019. "Violations of dominance in decision-making," Business Research, Springer;German Academic Association for Business Research, vol. 12(1), pages 209-239, April.
    6. Oliver, Adam, 2003. "The internal consistency of the standard gamble: tests after adjusting for prospect theory," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 159, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    7. Jakusch, Sven Thorsten & Meyer, Steffen & Hackethal, Andreas, 2019. "Taming models of prospect theory in the wild? Estimation of Vlcek and Hens (2011)," SAFE Working Paper Series 146, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE, revised 2019.
    8. Trabelsi, Mohamed Ali, 2006. "Les nouveaux modèles de décision dans le risque et l’incertain : quel apport ? [The new models of decision under risk or uncertainty : What approach?]," MPRA Paper 25442, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Eyal Baharad & Doron Kliger, 2013. "Market failure in light of non-expected utility," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 75(4), pages 599-619, October.
    10. Simone Cerreia‐Vioglio & David Dillenberger & Pietro Ortoleva, 2015. "Cautious Expected Utility and the Certainty Effect," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 83, pages 693-728, March.
    11. Azevedo, Eduardo M. & Gottlieb, Daniel, 2012. "Risk-neutral firms can extract unbounded profits from consumers with prospect theory preferences," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 147(3), pages 1291-1299.
    12. Eyal Baharad & Shmuel Nitzan, 2008. "Contest Efforts in Light of Behavioural Considerations," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 118(533), pages 2047-2059, November.
    13. Ulrich Schmidt & Horst Zank, 2008. "Risk Aversion in Cumulative Prospect Theory," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 54(1), pages 208-216, January.
    14. Hurley, Terrance M., 2010. "A review of agricultural production risk in the developing world," Working Papers 188476, HarvestChoice.
    15. Martín Egozcue & Luis Fuentes García & Ričardas Zitikis, 2023. "The Slicing Method: Determining Insensitivity Regions of Probability Weighting Functions," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 61(4), pages 1369-1402, April.
    16. Fong, Wai Mun, 2016. "Stochastic dominance and the omega ratio," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 17(C), pages 7-9.
    17. Katarzyna M. Werner & Horst Zank, 2019. "A revealed reference point for prospect theory," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 67(4), pages 731-773, June.
    18. Hamza Bahaji, 2011. "Incentives from stock option grants: a behavioral approach," Post-Print halshs-00681611, HAL.
    19. Caporin, Massimiliano & Costola, Michele & Jannin, Gregory & Maillet, Bertrand, 2018. "“On the (Ab)use of Omega?”," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 11-33.
    20. Ewa Michalska & Renata Dudzińska-Baryła, 2012. "Comparison of the valuations of alternatives based on cumulative prospect theory and almost stochastic dominance," Operations Research and Decisions, Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, Faculty of Management, vol. 22(3), pages 23-36.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:28:y:2017:i:2:p:150-164. 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.