#  Cost-effectiveness of anti-terrorist spending 

 





April 03, 2008

 

 

The Economist recently had an interesting article on anti-terrorist  
spending (["Feel safer now?"](http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10808502), March-6 print edition). The piece reports  
on research done by Todd Sandler and Daniel Arce on the costs and  
benefits of different responses to terrorism (paper [here](http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/Default.aspx?ID=968)). Terrorism creates a lot  
of anxiety but (so the authors say) actually costs few lives and many  
counter-measures might be ineffective, e.g. if terrorists just shift  
attacks to easier targets in response. Sandler and Arce suggest most of  
their spending scenarios are not cost-effective, but that political  
cooperation could be worthwhile.

Not being an expert in this area, I suspect that the counterfactuals  
involved must be extremely hard to defend given the scope of  
transnational terrorism. Similarly the reported bounds are huge and the  
underlying numbers should be up for debate. For example while skimming  
through, I noticed that didn't see any accounting for psychological  
stress of those not directly involved in an attack (e.g. the general  
population), nor that of military personnel and families who implement  
some of the counter-measures. Any views?

Posted by [Sebastian Bauhoff](http://www.iq.harvard.edu/blog/sss/archives/author/sebastian-bauhoff/) at April 3, 2008 6:00 PM



 

 

 



 

 

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