Tilman Brück

Business under fire: entrepreneurship and violent conflict in developing countries

In this article, we provide an introduction to the Special Issue of the Journal of Conflict Resolution devoted to the impact of violent conflict on entrepreneurship in developing countries. First we note that there is insufficient attention in the literature on the impact of violent conflict on the firm or entrepreneur level. Then, after we define entrepreneurship and violent conflict, we provide a summary of the existing literature and give an overview of the contributions in this Special Issue. We conclude by noting policy implications and areas for further research.

The Economics of Counterterrorism: A Survey

We provide a review of theoretical and empirical contributions on the economic analysis of terrorism and counterterrorism. We argue that simple rational-choice models of terrorist behavior – in the form of cost-benefit models – already provide a well-founded theoretical framework for the study of terrorism and counterterrorism. We also hint at their limitations which relate to the failure of accounting for the dynamics between terrorism and counterterrorism that may produce unintended second-order effects as well as for the costs associated with counterterrorism and its international dimension. We reevaluate previously proposed counterterrorism strategies accordingly. Finally, in the light of our findings, we discuss interesting areas of future research.