The Review of Economics and Statistics Vol. 105 No. 5 2023

Transnational Terrorist Recruitment: Evidence from Daesh Personnel Records

Anne Brockmeyer¹; Quy-Toan Do²; Clément Joubert²; Kartika Bhatia³; Mohamed Abdel Jelil⁴

¹ Institute for Fiscal Studies, University College London, World Bank and CEPR · ² World Bank (Research Department) · ³ ASPIRE India · ⁴ World Bank (Human Development Unit)

Abstract

Global terrorist organizations attract radicalized individuals across borders and constitute a threat for both sending and receiving countries. We use unique personnel records from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Daesh) to show that unemployment in sending countries is associated with the number of transnational terrorist recruits from these countries. The relationship is spatially heterogeneous, which is most plausibly attributable to travel costs. We argue that poor labor market opportunities generally push more individuals to join terrorist organizations, but at the same time, limit their ability to do so when longer travel distances imply higher travel costs.

DOI

10.1162/rest_a_01161

Volume

105

Issue

5

Pages

1092-1109

Language

en

Sources

bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

Cite

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