IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/defpea/v28y2017i2p150-164.html

Terrorist choice: a stochastic dominance and prospect theory analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Peter J. Phillips
  • Gabriela Pohl

Abstract

The paper explores terrorist choice by applying two well-known theoretical frameworks: stochastic dominance and prospect theory (PT). We analyse each pair of attack methods that can be formed from the RAND-MIPT database and the Global Terrorism Database. Instances of stochastic dominance are identified. PT orderings are computed. Attention is accorded to the identification of ‘trigger points’ and the circumstances that may lead to an increased likelihood that a terrorist will select an attack method associated with a higher expected number of fatalities, i.e. a potentially more damaging attack method.

Suggested Citation

  • Peter J. Phillips & Gabriela Pohl, 2017. "Terrorist choice: a stochastic dominance and prospect theory analysis," Defence and Peace Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 28(2), pages 150-164, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:defpea:v:28:y:2017:i:2:p:150-164
    DOI: 10.1080/10242694.2015.1033888
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/10242694.2015.1033888
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/10242694.2015.1033888?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Phillips Peter J, 2011. "Lone Wolf Terrorism," Peace Economics, Peace Science, and Public Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 17(1), pages 1-31, March.
    2. Walter Enders & Todd Sandler, 2005. "Transnational Terrorism 1968–2000: Thresholds, Persistence, and Forecasts," Southern Economic Journal, Southern Economic Association, vol. 71(3), pages 467-482, January.
    3. Meyer, Jack, 1977. "Choice among distributions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 14(2), pages 326-336, April.
    4. Patrick T. Brandt & Todd Sandler, 2010. "What Do Transnational Terrorists Target? Has It Changed? Are We Safer?," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 54(2), pages 214-236, April.
    5. Levy, Haim & Wiener, Zvi, 2013. "Prospect theory and utility theory: Temporary versus permanent attitude toward risk," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 1-23.
    6. Daniel Kahneman & Amos Tversky, 2013. "Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Leonard C MacLean & William T Ziemba (ed.), HANDBOOK OF THE FUNDAMENTALS OF FINANCIAL DECISION MAKING Part I, chapter 6, pages 99-127, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    7. Sergiu Hart, 2011. "Comparing Risks by Acceptance and Rejection," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 119(4), pages 617-638.
    8. George Wu & Richard Gonzalez, 1996. "Curvature of the Probability Weighting Function," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 42(12), pages 1676-1690, December.
    9. Haim Levy, 1992. "Stochastic Dominance and Expected Utility: Survey and Analysis," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 38(4), pages 555-593, April.
    10. Tversky, Amos & Kahneman, Daniel, 1992. "Advances in Prospect Theory: Cumulative Representation of Uncertainty," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 5(4), pages 297-323, October.
    11. Han Bleichrodt & Jose Luis Pinto, 2000. "A Parameter-Free Elicitation of the Probability Weighting Function in Medical Decision Analysis," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 46(11), pages 1485-1496, November.
    12. G. Hanoch & H. Levy, 1969. "The Efficiency Analysis of Choices Involving Risk," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 36(3), pages 335-346.
    13. Christopher K. Butler, 2007. "Prospect Theory and Coercive Bargaining," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 51(2), pages 227-250, April.
    14. Rothschild, Michael & Stiglitz, Joseph E., 1970. "Increasing risk: I. A definition," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 2(3), pages 225-243, September.
    15. Sandler, Todd & Tschirhart, John T. & Cauley, Jon, 1983. "A Theoretical Analysis of Transnational Terrorism," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 77(1), pages 36-54, March.
    16. Vijay S. Bawa, 1982. "Research Bibliography---Stochastic Dominance: A Research Bibliography," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 28(6), pages 698-712, June.
    17. Meyer, Jack, 1977. "Further Applications of Stochastic Dominance to Mutual Fund Performance," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 12(2), pages 235-242, June.
    18. Kevin Siqueira & Todd Sandler, 2006. "Terrorists versus the Government," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 50(6), pages 878-898, December.
    19. B. Peter Rosendorff & Todd Sandler, 2004. "Too Much of a Good Thing?," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 48(5), pages 657-671, October.
    20. Sandler, Todd & Enders, Walter, 2004. "An economic perspective on transnational terrorism," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 301-316, June.
    21. Wolfgang Pesendorfer, 2006. "Behavioral Economics Comes of Age: A Review Essay on Advances in Behavioral Economics," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 44(3), pages 712-721, September.
    22. Rothschild, Michael & Stiglitz, Joseph E., 1971. "Increasing risk II: Its economic consequences," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 3(1), pages 66-84, March.
    23. Luis Braido & Daniel Ferreira, 2006. "Options can induce risk taking for arbitrary preferences," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 27(3), pages 513-522, April.
    24. Bruno S. Frey & Simon Luechinger, "undated". "How to Fight Terrorism: Alternatives to Deterrence," IEW - Working Papers 137, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich.
    25. Todd Sandler & John L. Scott, 1987. "Terrorist Success in Hostage-Taking Incidents," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 31(1), pages 35-53, March.
    26. Camerer, Colin F & Ho, Teck-Hua, 1994. "Violations of the Betweenness Axiom and Nonlinearity in Probability," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 8(2), pages 167-196, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Phillips Peter J. & Pohl Gabriela, 2018. "The Deferral of Attacks: SP/A Theory as a Model of Terrorist Choice when Losses Are Inevitable," Open Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 1(1), pages 71-85, February.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Phillips Peter J. & Pohl Gabriela, 2018. "The Deferral of Attacks: SP/A Theory as a Model of Terrorist Choice when Losses Are Inevitable," Open Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 1(1), pages 71-85, February.
    2. Peter Brooks & Simon Peters & Horst Zank, 2014. "Risk behavior for gain, loss, and mixed prospects," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 77(2), pages 153-182, August.
    3. Hamza Bahaji, 2011. "Incentives from stock option grants: a behavioral approach," Post-Print halshs-00681607, HAL.
    4. Thomas Kourouxous & Thomas Bauer, 2019. "Violations of dominance in decision-making," Business Research, Springer;German Academic Association for Business Research, vol. 12(1), pages 209-239, April.
    5. Nowak, Maciej, 2004. "Preference and veto thresholds in multicriteria analysis based on stochastic dominance," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 158(2), pages 339-350, October.
    6. Oliver, Adam, 2003. "The internal consistency of the standard gamble: tests after adjusting for prospect theory," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 159, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    7. Jakusch, Sven Thorsten & Meyer, Steffen & Hackethal, Andreas, 2019. "Taming models of prospect theory in the wild? Estimation of Vlcek and Hens (2011)," SAFE Working Paper Series 146, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE, revised 2019.
    8. Hamza Bahaji, 2011. "Incentives from stock option grants: a behavioral approach," Review of Accounting and Finance, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 10(3), pages 200-227, August.
    9. Eyal Baharad & Doron Kliger, 2013. "Market failure in light of non-expected utility," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 75(4), pages 599-619, October.
    10. Liu, Liqun & Meyer, Jack, 2025. "Almost stochastic dominance: Magnitude constraints on risk aversion," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 82-90.
    11. Levy, Haim & Levy, Moshe, 2002. "Experimental test of the prospect theory value function: A stochastic dominance approach," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 89(2), pages 1058-1081, November.
    12. Shuoli Zhao & Chengyan Yue, 2020. "Risk preferences of commodity crop producers and specialty crop producers: An application of prospect theory," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 51(3), pages 359-372, May.
    13. George Wu & Alex B. Markle, 2008. "An Empirical Test of Gain-Loss Separability in Prospect Theory," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 54(7), pages 1322-1335, July.
    14. Marie Pfiffelmann, 2011. "Solving the St. Petersburg Paradox in cumulative prospect theory: the right amount of probability weighting," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 71(3), pages 325-341, September.
    15. Azevedo, Eduardo M. & Gottlieb, Daniel, 2012. "Risk-neutral firms can extract unbounded profits from consumers with prospect theory preferences," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 147(3), pages 1291-1299.
    16. Trabelsi, Mohamed Ali, 2006. "Les nouveaux modèles de décision dans le risque et l’incertain : quel apport ? [The new models of decision under risk or uncertainty : What approach?]," MPRA Paper 25442, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. Hamza Bahaji, 2011. "Employee Stock Options Incentive Effects: A Cpt-Based Model," Post-Print halshs-00681609, HAL.
    18. Eyal Baharad & Shmuel Nitzan, 2008. "Contest Efforts in Light of Behavioural Considerations," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 118(533), pages 2047-2059, November.
    19. Levy, Moshe, 2009. "Almost Stochastic Dominance and stocks for the long run," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 194(1), pages 250-257, April.
    20. Ulrich Schmidt & Horst Zank, 2008. "Risk Aversion in Cumulative Prospect Theory," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 54(1), pages 208-216, January.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:defpea:v:28:y:2017:i:2:p:150-164. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/GDPE20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.