Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/171546 
Year of Publication: 
2009
Series/Report no.: 
Economics Working Paper Series No. 09/103
Publisher: 
ETH Zurich, CER-ETH - Center of Economic Research, Zurich
Abstract: 
Individual terrorist are frequently behaving seemingly absurd, e.g. by carrying out suicide operations, while activities of the terrorist organisations as a whole often seem to be conducted in a very effective way. These facts caused many researchers to regard the leaders representing the organisations like rational entities, while the followers are supposed to be just obeying and, hence, to be irrational. In this paper we offer a different approach which postulates rationality of all involved agents. We demonstrate how these agents’ behaviour could be modelled, while taking into account options of the terrorist leaders to influence their followers. From our model approaches to counter terrorism on both the leadership as well as the follower level can be derived.
Subjects: 
cognitive dissonance
joint production
Lancastrian characteristics approach
public goods
rationality
suicide attacks
terrorism
JEL: 
D74
D69
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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