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The Diseconomies of Terrorism

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  • Peter J. Phillips

Abstract

The Global Terrorism Database (GTD) contains many active and inactive terrorist groups. The defining characteristic of the terrorist groups contained in the GTD is smallness. Unlike the modern business enterprise, for example, there appears to be no trend towards ‘bigness’. This paper presents an analysis of the size distribution of terrorist groups and the implications of this size distribution for the technological conditions under which the output of terrorism may be increased. With net internal and external diseconomies to larger-scale production of terrorism, we should observe relatively small terrorist groups and little or no tendency for the number and size of terrorist groups in the ‘terrorism industry’ to increase. These facts do characterise the empirically observed size distribution of terrorist groups, and imply that the technological conditions under which the output of terrorism may be increased are characterised by internal and external diseconomies to larger-scale production of terrorism.

Suggested Citation

  • Peter J. Phillips, 2011. "The Diseconomies of Terrorism," World Economics, World Economics, 1 Ivory Square, Plantation Wharf, London, United Kingdom, SW11 3UE, vol. 12(4), pages 171-192, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:wej:wldecn:501
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    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. Timothy Mathews & Aniruddha Bagchi & João Ricardo Faria, 2019. "Simple analytics of the impact of terror generation on attacker–defender interactions," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 179(3), pages 287-299, June.

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