In this chapter, we explore the rational choice approach to terrorism, combining viewpoints from political economy, organizational behavior, and individual psychology. We therefore examine terrorism as a strategic option chosen under certain socio-economic and political constraints, evaluating how aspects like market forces, organizational tactics, and individual incentives influence the phenomenon.

The third chapter details the development of Contract Clause doctrine throughout the United States. It surveys ten years of litigation in state and federal courts, organizing the decisions by the type of reform and their resolution. Challenged reform measures include increasing employee contribution rates, reducing or freezing cost of living allowances, eliminating pension spiking, changing benefit formulas and actuarial factors, redefining the earnable compensation criterion, imposing partial forfeiture of benefits upon conviction, and reducing or eliminating health care benefits. Adding an inclusive account of current court practice to the existing literature, the analysis tests the boundaries of government power to modify pension plans within multiple legal systems. Tracking cases across jurisdictions affords a unique window into contract principles and their application. Judicial lawmaking is not orderly. Decisional rules often lack the philosophical foundation necessary to achieve their purposes or accommodate existing social objectives. The relevant authorities are set out in an accessible way that makes sense of a rapidly developing area of law. Moreover, because most cases turn on the creation of a contractual obligation—an issue that is judicially determined—it provides context for an intensive evidentiary exploration of the contract criterion in subsequent chapters.

This chapter explores the complex interaction between (human) migration and terrorism. It proposes a ‘terrorism-migration cycle’ to investigate systematically this interaction for various stages of the migration process. Importantly, no stage of the migration process is independent of what happened on the previous stage, affecting how terrorism and migration interact. It is shown that terrorism may be a trigger of migration in the origin country, that only particular selections of migrants choose to leave a country, and that these migrants then sort into different destinations. The role of migration governance as a means to avoid the influx of potential terrorists is explored as well as the responses of destination-country populations and governments to the threat of imported terrorism. In addition, homegrown terrorism produced in immigrant communities is discussed as well as political violence directed against immigrants. Finally, it is argued that there are feedback effects from diasporas on the origin countries of immigrants.

This essay is intended as a sketch of the current literature on the ethics of counterterrorism. It is organized by topic, dealing in turn with whether Just War Theory can accommodate terrorism and counterterrorism or needs to be adjusted in order to do so, definitions of terrorism, methods of interrogation (including torture), the use of drones and targeted killing, methods of surveillance, and some unorthodox views. Perhaps not surprisingly there is a range of views on what measures can be justified in response to terrorism, but the consensus, so far as there is one, seems to be that some version of Just War Theory, possibly updated to give more weight to concerns about the effects of actions, is about right, and that very hawkish responses to terrorism are not usually justified.

The sixth chapter explores changing contract coverage. Decisions determining the validity of public pension reforms under state and U.S. Contract Clauses depend on the contract condition. Over time, it might be expected that repeat resolutions would yield clarity and consistency on one or more contractual issues. But judicial opinions have proven far from predictable. The uncertainty is no doubt complicated by the fact that determinations about contracts cut across state courts and state laws. To help unify the field, this chapter maps pension contract along various criteria and uses California’s influential and controversial government pension law as a framework to evaluate conflicting approaches.

The eighth chapter concludes that synthesizing recent judicial opinions spanning the United States promotes public pension reform. A qualitative inquiry provides a fresh vantage point to guide policymakers and better enable informed decisions in the ongoing debate over retirement. Streamlining a complex array of constitutional contract issues in the context of pension reform litigation also supports legal practice by widening the perspective of judges, as well as the lawyers who argue before them. It similarly influences the theory of constitutional law protecting public pensions contracts by reflecting on their conceptual structure, doctrinal expression, and normative underpinnings. Ultimately, this book aims to enrich our larger social understanding of what the Contract Clause means, and thereby what retirement security signifies, in an ongoing age of austerity.

The first chapter places Coase, Pigou, and the US environmental policies examined in the volume in the broader context of the literature on the economics of institutional change. This academic research provides background for Coase and suggests the tradeoffs that emerge when decentralized approaches to economic problems are displaced by those of centralized regulation.

The objective of this chapter is to consider the effect of terrorism on trade. We rely on the existing literature on trade and terrorism and primarily use perfectly competitive models of trade. First, we highlight how terrorism may affect trade by damaging resources and causing general equilibrium reallocations of factors of production. Second, we consider how these trade effects may be altered in the presence of optimal counterterrorism policy. Third, the chapter discusses how trade may affect intra-industry trade in varieties using a monopolistically competitive framework. Finally, we discuss some of the existing empirical literature that has focused on trade-terrorism and FDI-terrorism issues. A central message of our analysis is that while terrorism will likely raise costs and dampen economic activity, whether it will raise or reduce trade of a nation depends on how terrorism affects that nation’s resource reallocation, relative prices and real income level.

Scholars examining the characteristics of suicide bombers tend to note that poverty-related variables cannot explain participation (that suicide bombers come from more educated and wealthy circumstances). On the other hand, scholars and practitioners often note that poverty reduction is essential to combatting terrorism (and support for suicide terrorism seems correlated with higher poverty). Much of the empirical work suffers from an over-reliance on the Palestinian case, possible sample-selection bias, and conflating populations with recruits and absolute poverty/low education vs. relative poverty and relative deprivation. Consequently, scholars have concluded that adverse socio-economic conditions and suicide terrorism are unrelated or even inversely related. The demographic qualities of suicide bombers challenge the link between poverty, poor education and violence. While the inverse relationship continues to find broad empirical support, many studies focused on a single case (the Palestinians). Using original data from field research in Sri Lanka this chapter raises critical issues and provides some preliminary empirical support for a link between lower levels of education and support for suicide terrorism. An operative might have different characteristics than the general population from which he/she is drawn. Future research should seek to identify more precise causal mechanisms between socio-economic conditions and suicide terrorism and all forms of political violence, while policies aimed to redress these conditions should continue as constructive elements of broader counter-terrorism strategies.

This chapter argues that there are no particular qualities that are unique to terrorists that lead them to become involved in terrorism, nor are there singular identifiable pathways into, through or out of terrorism. Although it is possible to construct broad psychological profiles of terrorists, these lack predictive validity and consistency at an individual level, and (if anything) the composition of terrorist groups is remarkable for their diversity. Set against this, understanding terrorism as a dynamic process drawing on individual, group and community dynamics has proved to be an effective basis for intervention and offers an agenda for future research. It is important that in responding to the threat of terrorism, we do not implement responses that diminish our societal values, nor lose sight of the importance of evidence-based policy making. A medical epithet comes to mind—primum non nocere—first do no harm.

Over the years since 9/11, there have been many calls for systematic analysis of domestic counterterrorism expenditures—indeed, in the United States, it is required by current regulations. The paper lays out and explains the standard cost/benefit and risk-analytic approaches that might be applied to evaluate such expenditures. However, such research has been quite limited so far. While systematic analysis can make the counterterrorism enterprise more coherent and efficient, domestic terrorism in most countries (particularly those outside of war zones) scarcely presents enough of a hazard to justify the enormous efforts and expenditures that have been made to counter it. It is an area of research that should be more fully developed.

This Chapter, the final chapter, concludes and discusses the future directions of the research on security exceptions. It examines the evolving role of security exceptions in international economic law, particularly within the WTO framework. While traditionally viewed as shields for states to implement necessary security measures, these exceptions increasingly serve as tools for economic protectionism and geopolitical leverage. The Chapter explores the complexities of balancing trade commitments with national security concerns, highlighting inconsistencies in adjudication and the risks of opportunistic state behavior. It proposes a dual framework distinguishing between conventional and novel security measures, advocating for clearer rules, procedural safeguards, and a compensation mechanism to deter abuse. Additionally, it calls for WTO reforms, stronger cooperation with the UN, and revisions to regional trade agreements and investment treaties to ensure security measures remain transparent, time-bound, and economically efficient.

We describe the effect that terror has on international tourism flows. Studies yield very different results. We show in our survey that this is due to the perspective taken – specific single attacks versus the entire history of attacks in a country, selected countries versus a comprehensive set of countries – and the time frame under consideration. While high-profile attacks may have large impact effects, on average terror has mild effects that however may be relatively persistent. We survey the most important contributions and point out the relative strengths and difficulties that the different methodological approaches entail.

This Chapter discusses legal and policy options for reforming security exceptions through implementing substantive and procedural mechanisms to maximize joint gains from international trade and investment and the protection of the national security interests of WTO members. In particular, relying on the theories and concepts relevant to this book and the conducted comparative research, this Chapter attempts to reconsider the role of security exception clauses in international economic law and contemplates additional institutional responses to remedy the current flaws in their interpretation and application. What is needed, and what this book seeks to provide, is an analytic perspective for assessing when more restraint on the application of security measures is desirable and when it is not.

This chapter examines the applicability of international investment law to emerging digital asset classes such as data packages, cryptocurrencies, and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). These assets, now mainstream investments, raise unique issues in terms of their protection under investment treaties. The chapter explores whether digital assets qualify as ’investments’ under traditional treaty definitions, and the application of the common protections offered under investment treaties to such assets. It assesses digital assets against criteria often applied by investment treaty tribunals to argue that digital assets can broadly be classified as investments. The chapter also analyses the key questions arising from the application of the fair and equitable treatment (FET) standard and protection against expropriation to digital assets, especially given the current relative lack of regulation in this area. Valuation complexities, including market volatility and the absence of benchmarks, are addressed, emphasising the need for close consideration of these issues in the context of investment treaty claims. Lastly, the chapter addresses structuring investments via corporate vehicles to enhance treaty protections and mitigate risks. It concludes that, while investment law can accommodate digital assets, careful structuring and awareness of treaty terms are vital for investor protection within an uncertain and ever-evolving regulatory environment.

Since the turn of the century, few issues have shaped political debate and policy-making more than terrorism. As a result, there has been a huge increase in the amount of academic research devoted to investigating the causes and consequences of terrorism. The Cambridge Handbook on the Economics of Terrorism is the first to present a state-of-the art survey of the economics of terrorism. It adopts a rational-choice perspective, according to which terrorists are viewed as rational economic actors, and presents a framework for analyzing the causes and consequences of terrorism. It explores the causes and consequences of terrorism and shines a light on practical counter-terrorism policies and their trade-offs. With contributions from many leading figures in this fast-growing and important field, this book offers an accessible yet comprehensive collection of the economic analysis of terror.