Security

This chapter studies security as a defensive counter-terror measure Counter-terrorism measures , beginning with Landes (1978), the first empirical and theoretical work on terrorism. Plane hijacking or skyjacking is modeled as a crime and the chapter presents the estimates of the effect of the installation of metal detectors at airports on plane hijacking. We introduce the concepts of general-damage, terror-damage, and terror-control functions. A terror organization is assumed to maximize its surplus equal to the difference between the value of damage it inflicts minus the cost of producing terror attacks with respect to the choice of the terror level. A target or defending state seeks to minimize the sum of terror-damage costs and the costs of security measures by choosing the level of security. The rational choice behaviors of the terror organization and the state are considered separately and then jointly defining a Nash equilibrium Nash equilibrium solution. Security is shown to “work” in two ways toward containing the damage from terrorism: directly as well as indirectly by deterring a terrorist organization from launching attacks. In a multiple-target-countries scenario, we analyze the choice of security levels by multiple target countries in the Nash (non-cooperative) equilibrium Nash equilibrium as well as in a cooperative equilibrium.