Cycles of violence, and terrorist attacks index for the State of Massachusetts

Abstract: I apply the Beveridge-Nelson business cycle decomposition method to the time series of per capita murder in the State of Massachusetts. (1933-2005). Separating out “permanent” from “cyclical” murder, I hypothesize that the cyclical part coincides with documented waves of organized crime, internal tensions, breakdowns in social order, crime legislation, social, and political unrest, and recently with the periodic terrorist attacks to the U.S. The estimated cyclical component of murder warns that terrorist attacks in the U.S. from 1940 to 2005, have affected Massachusetts creating estimated turning point dates clearly marked by the most tragic terrorist attacks to the nation: the shut down in power in NYC in 1965, the World Trade Center Bombing in 1993, and 9/11 2001. The index for Massachusetts foretold with amazing precision those attacks, and must be used as a proxy for attacks for the Whole U.S along with indexes already constructed for the nation (http://mpra.ub.uni-uenchen.de/1145/01/MPRA_paper_1145.pdf) and, New York City (http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/4200/01/MPRA_paper_4200.pdf). The indexes must be used as dependent variables in structural models for terrorist attacks and in models assessing the effects of terrorism on the U.S. economy.