The main objective of this paper is to empirically investigate the socio-economic causes of terrorism and political violence in a sample of 12 countries in Western Europe. First, we show that in western European countries the classical economic argument of opportunity cost is confirmed. That is,...

Prior research has concluded that socio-economic development does not significantly affect terrorism. We take an alternative view. First, we note that a country's socio-economic circumstances affect terrorists' behavior through terrorism's opportunity costs. We argue that this reasoning also...