Research Magazine 2020

Direct and Indirect Effects of Human Capital on Domestic Terrorism

Aniruddha Bagchi and Benjamin Scafidi

Coles Research Symposium on Homeland Security Special Issue, SIFALL19-03, October 2019

Overview We consider the effect of human capital on domestic terrorism. Our results indicate that human capital increases domestic terrorism, and the magnitude of this effect is largest for tertiary education. We also consider the interaction of human capital with some well-known determinants of terrorism, such as unemployment, political stability and political repression. We find that political stability interacts positively with human capital. Also, unemployment interacts positively with tertiary education. The interaction of political repression with human capital is not statistically significant. The net effect of human capital on domestic terrorism in a country depends upon how strong each of these factors are. We also consider several extensions of our model. In one such extension, we show that everything else remaining constant, higher primary test scores is associated with more domestic terrorism. These results show that ignorance is not a root cause of domestic terrorism.

24 | Coles Research Symposium

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