Counterterrorism Policy: Spillovers, Regime Stability, and Corner Solutions

Bandyopadhyay, Subhayu; Sandler, Todd

doi:10.20955/wp.2020.015

Working Paper

Counterterrorism Policy: Spillovers, Regime Stability, and Corner Solutions

Abstract: This paper takes a unique approach to the scenario where a resident terrorist group in a (fragile) developing nation poses a terrorism threat at home and abroad. The host developing nation’s proactive countermeasures against the resident terrorist group not only limits terrorism at home and abroad, but also bolsters regime stability at home. A two-stage game is presented in which the developed country takes a leadership role to institute a tax-subsidy combination to discourage (encourage) proactive measures at home (abroad) in stage 1. Stage 2 involves both nations’ counterterrorism choices under alternative stage-1 public-policy packages. Unlike the extant literature, we explore corner and interior solutions in both stages based on the terrorists’ targeting preferences and the host nation’s regime-stability preferences. Surprisingly, the developed nation may profit from policy packages that reduce global counterterrorism while raising global terrorism. This outcome and others involve engineered counterterrorism burden shifting.

Keywords: counterterrorism policy; tax-subsidy redistributive schemes; externalities; terrorist-targeting preferences; publicness and corner solutions;

JEL Classification: D74; H23; H41;

https://doi.org/10.20955/wp.2020.015

Status: Published in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization