Determinants of Terrorism in South Asia: Insights From a Dynamic Panel Data Analysis

Terrorist activities in the post-Paris Peace Treaties have emerged as one of the most perilous agendas that are troubling the world economies and political figures in securing their nations and regions. Several socio-economic factors were evidenced to be the crucial factors in determining terrorist activities all around the world. The present article strives to identify the significance of several socio economic factors, namely, refugee population, access to good sanitation facilities, youth unemployment rate, percentage of education expenditure to GDP, percentage of military expenditure to GDP, per capita GDP and political stability in the panel of seven South Asian countries and China for the period 2002-2016. By applying both static and dynamic panel models, the article observes that all of the selected variables explain the terrorism index with expected signs. The article thus prescribes that the governments of the selected countries should concentrate on allocating their budgets on the improvements of sectors underlying the associated indicators.