Actualités

Harvesting Terrorists

Mardi | 2015-06-02
Sully 5, 16h-18h

Alain AYONG LE KAMA – Ujjayant CHAKRAVORTY – Mouez FODHA

We develop a model of capturing terrorists in a dynamic framework when the very act of killing or capturing them induces new recruit formation to the terrorists? cause. We adopt standard economic models of fishing to show that the discount rate, the cost of catching terrorists and the technology used, can affect optimal terrorism policy. We show conditions under which the model yields a  » socially optimal » capture rate, and conditions under which no solution to the problem exists. The paper suggests that terrorism is a dynamic and long run problem and needs to be modeled using methods available in other disciplines such as resource economics.