Poverty and terrorism

The Moscovite metro bombing in Park Kultury and Lubjanka this morning has once again sparked fears about terrorism. As initial suspicions were directed towards North Caucasus, it also highlights the seemingly obvious relationship between poverty and violence (keep in mind that lack of political rights is also a capability deprivation). Hands on and nerdy as we are at BTE, we point to the AER paper by Abadie (2006), which empirically examines the link between political freedoms and terrorism. Using IV identification and squared terms, Abadie (2006) claims that lack of political rights does not cause transnational terrorism and suggests non-linearities (apparently, everything is about non-linearities these days) that complicate a straightforward interpretation.

However, there is surprisingly little evidence for his claim on the national level. If anyone knows an interesting paper, please drop a comment. And for those into research: It still strikes me how straightforward Abadie (2006) is. Apparently, running an IV using conventional instruments and adding a squared term for political rights is enough to get you into AER (sorry for my namedropping snobism).