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Everybody's a Victim? Global Terror, Well-Being and Political Attitudes

Author

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  • Akay, Alpaslan

    (Department of Economics, School of Business, Economics and Law, Göteborg University)

  • Bargain, Olivier

    (Bordeaux University and the Institut Universitaire de France (France))

  • Elsayed, Ahmed

    (IZA (Germany))

Abstract
Terror has become a global issue. Terror acts perpetuated by religious, nationalist or political groups around the globe can propagate distress rapidly through different channels and possibly change political attitudes. This paper suggests the first evaluation of the impact of global terror on human welfare. We combine panel datasets for Australia, Germany, Russia, Switzerland, the UK and the US. Individual well-being informationfor 750,000 individualxyear observations, recorded on precise dates, is matched with daily information on the 70,000 terror events that took place worldwide during 1994-2013. High-frequency data and quasi-random terror shocks of varying intensity provide the conditions for robust inference, while external validity is guaranteed by the use of large representative samples. We find a significantly negative effect of global terror on well-being, with a money-metric cost of around 6% - 17% of national income. Among diffusion channels, stock markets and economic anticipations play a minimal role, while traditional media filter the most salient events. The effect is greatly modulated by the physical, genetic or cultural proximity to the terror regions/victims. For a subset of countries, we also show that global terror has significantly increased the intention to vote for conservative parties. Heterogeneity analyses point to the mediating effect of risk perception: individuals who exhibit stronger emotional responses to terror possibly more exposed to potential threats - are also more likely to experience a conservative shift.

Suggested Citation

  • Akay, Alpaslan & Bargain, Olivier & Elsayed, Ahmed, 2018. "Everybody's a Victim? Global Terror, Well-Being and Political Attitudes," Working Papers in Economics 733, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.
  • Handle: RePEc:hhs:gunwpe:0733
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Global Terror; Subjective Well-Being; Media; Political Attitudes;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C99 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Other
    • D60 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - General
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • D74 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Conflict; Conflict Resolution; Alliances; Revolutions
    • I31 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - General Welfare, Well-Being

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