ABSTRACT. We exploit the public good attributes of Ganges water pollution cleanup and theoretically analyze an aggregate economy of two cities---Kanpur and Varanasi---through which the Ganges flows. Our specific objective is to study whether water pollution cleanup in these two cities ought to be provided in a centralized or in a decentralized manner. We first determine the efficient cleanup amounts that maximize the aggregate surplus from making the Ganges cleaner in the two cities. Second, we compute the optimal amount of water pollution cleanup in the two cities in a decentralized regime in which spending on cleanup is financed by a uniform tax on the city residents. Third, we ascertain the optimal amount of water pollution cleanup in the two cities in a centralized regime subject to equal provision of cleanup and cost sharing. Fourth, we show that if the two cities have the same preference for pollution cleanup then centralization is preferable to decentralization as long as there is a spillover from pollution cleanup. Finally, we show that if the two cities have dissimilar preferences for pollution cleanup then centralization is preferable to decentralization as long as the spillover exceeds a certain threshold.

ABSTRACT. Air pollution is known to lower worker productivity in myriad settings. However, causal inference studies using reliable air pollution data to study the effect of air pollution on physical productivity in outdoor settings over periods of time comparable to a workday are sparse, especially using US data. Furthermore, studies identifying the specific pollutant(s) responsible for this effect are even less common. By using ultramarathon race performances as a measure of physical productivity and spatiotemporal variation in ambient pollution levels, we find that particulate matter (PM10) is the key pollutant responsible for decreasing consistent, metered physical productivity in outdoor settings. In addition to this, this paper also extends the existing literature by suggesting a distinction in which pollutants affect physical productivity along an aerobic/anaerobic divide, thereby explaining part of the existing divide in the air pollution and physical productivity literature. We also provide the first evidence of gender-based differences in the effects of air pollution on physical productivity.

ABSTRACT. As the largest greenhouse gas (GHG) emitting sector, environmental adjustments within the electricity generation and supply sector are crucial for China to achieve its emission reduction goals. Also, the spatial mismatch between electricity generation and consumption in China induces frequent regional electricity transmission, which separates the upstream GHG emissions in electricity generation from downstream electricity consumption. Therefore, it is significant to identify the driving factors of industrial GHG emissions in the provinces of China from the perspective of inter-provincial substitutions in electricity generation and consumption. A provincial multi-regional input-output (MRIO) model and structural decomposition analysis (SDA) allow for the decomposition of changes in industrial GHG emissions into distinct effects driven by changes in production technology as well as in final demand. In this study, the provincial symmetric MRIO tables from the China Emission Accounts and Datasets (CEADs) are used, which cover 42 industries and 31 provinces of China (excluding Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan). An SDA is conducted between tables of 2012, 2015, and 2017 to decompose the production technology into the own, substitution, and inter-relational effects from both local and external forces for the provinces in China. The expected findings will improve understanding of the roles of internal and external forces on industrial GHG emissions, characterize provincial heterogeneity, and provide suggestions to promote coordinated emission reduction strategies in China.

ABSTRACT. The coronavirus pandemic and subsequent and immediate shift to work-from-home impacted regional economies differently depending on the structure of the region’s economy. The Washington DC region, with high rates of employment in the professional and business service sector, has recorded high rates of work-from and low office occupancy. Given this shift, a common hypothesis is that work-from-home has resulted in changing demand preferences for housing. This paper examines changes in closed home sales in the Washington DC metropolitan area using sales price per square foot as a proxy for preference. We use data from the regional Multiple Listing Service (Bright MLS), which provides extremely detailed information on home sales. We find that the median sale price per square foot of detached homes, and townhomes increased relative to condos from 2020 to 2023. Furthermore, we find that the median sales price per square foot of homes of homes with more bedrooms increased relative to those with fewer bedrooms. Despite changes in preferences, there are aspects of the local market that remained unchanged. The distribution of closed sales in the 90th percentile changed little from 2018 through 2023 and the price per square foot by distance to downtown Washington DC were little changed. Our findings suggest that although the pandemic appears to have shifted the demand curve towards larger homes, there is little data to support changes in intraregional preferences in the most desirable neighborhoods.

ABSTRACT. Hysterisis, the Affordable Care Act, and COVID-19 Lockdowns have displaced many workers. Current job loss findings could be affected by potential confounding effects of shifts in demand, loss of industry-specific human capital, and concentrates on extensive margin job loss. This paper asks how marginal job displacement affects career earnings without industry-specific human capital loss and with demand held constant using a sample of players from the National Basketball Association (NBA). The empirical strategy leverages quasi-exogenous variation from a player’s national high school recruiting rank that predicts NBA minutes per game and career earnings. OLS finds an additional minute per game is associated with an increase of 2.7 million (18%) in career earnings and 2SLS finds this increases to 4.8-6.7 million (26-38%), holding position, high school year, and productivity per minute constant. Log-log specifications suggest that career earnings are elastic with respect to minutes per game. This suggests that human capital development concerns raise the costs of even small disruptions to hours worked.

ABSTRACT. Agricultural exports have been the focus of both policy and research regarding the possible contribution of rural areas to reduction of the US trade deficit. However, rural exports from the nonfarm economy are more than an order of magnitude larger. This paper contributes to our understanding of the role that rural nonfarm exports play and the possible policy lever of promoting rural innovation. Previous work from Europe show firms with R&D expenditure and patented innovation are more likely to export. However, due to data constraints, similar firm-level studies in the US are scant. In this study, we merged confidential firm-level international trade data from Longitudinal Firm Trade Transactions Database (LFTTD) and Rural Establishment Innovation Survey (REIS) data to examine the relationship between innovation and exports. The LFTTD data links individual trade transactions to US firms that report the trade value, date, and quantity, among other variables. The REIS data collect information on firm innovation, such as marketing, product innovation, and process innovations. The REIS-LFTTD linkage will allow us to estimate if there are any potential causal effects of innovation on export. As we only observe exporting behaviors for firms that choose to export, the self-selection into exporting could be endogenous. We use a two-stage selection model to address the potential endogeneities. In the first stage, we use a set of firm and firm owner characteristics to estimate the probability of exporting, and in the second stage, we use an outcome equation to estimate the export growth. The implications of the findings for trade policy and rural innovation policy are discussed.

ABSTRACT. The number of craft breweries in the United States stands at over 9,000. A growing literature examining the urban geography of craft breweries suggests that craft breweries, in many places, are a neighborhood amenity, which add to the quality of life for local residents. For example, studies have shown that craft breweries can contribute to increased real estate values (Nilsson and Reid 2019), function as neighborhood Third Places (Jolly et al. 2021), and do not result in increased crime rates (Nilsson et al. 2021). If craft breweries are a neighborhood amenity, we might expect to see them listed in the listings created by real estate agents when then they describe a home that is on the market. In this paper, we examine how craft breweries are being marketed as a neighborhood amenity in real estate ads, what kinds of homes and neighborhoods they are being marketed in, and how far reaching such amenity effects are. For this purpose, we use Multiple Service Listing (MLS) data between 2013 and 2020 containing the description (public remarks) of properties in the Charlotte metropolitan area. We find 1,088 listings that mentions proximity to breweries as a selling point in their public remarks. For our analysis, we map and calculate distances of these listings to their closest brewery to examine the range that craft breweries have on surrounding properties. We then compare the characteristics of these homes to a random set of homes in the metro area to examine if and what the differences are in housing and neighborhood characteristics are between homes in proximity to breweries vs. in other areas of the city. We find that homes mentioning breweries in their ads tend to be more expensive and sit on the market for a shorter period of time. We also find that the public remarks of these homes tend focus more on neighborhood amenities than housing characteristics compared to other homes. Particularly urban amenities such as the neighborhood being walkable, being in close proximity to restaurants and shops with a focus on local. The neighborhood name and that the home has been renovated are also distinguishing features of these homes, suggesting that breweries tend to locate in attractive, possibly gentrifying (or gentrified) neighborhoods. Features that are negatively associated with these listings include those describing suburban characteristics such as the culdesac, the size of the lot (acres), and schools.

ABSTRACT. The replicability crisis in the social sciences extends to a much more costly credibility crisis where the billions of dollars spent on high-quality data collection can be easily dismissed as confirmation bias generators for woke academics. At the core of the problem is the lack of transparency between specification testing used to arrive at “useful” statistical models, and hypothesis testing to verify that relationships identified in the sample are representative of the population. The study of how diversity may be associated with innovation is vulnerable to generating fragile, nonreplicable findings as the multitude of alternative measures induces a very high probability of false discovery. This paper examines the association between diversity of ownership teams and self-reported innovation in the Annual Business Survey. The split-sample protocol used to increase transparency of the analysis and credibility of findings requires: 1) drawing an exploratory subsample for specification testing and isolating a confirmatory subsample for future hypothesis testing; 2) publishing a registered report that specifies the hypotheses identified in the exploratory phase passed through for hypothesis testing; and 3) applying the appropriate family-wise error rate or false discovery rate correction to hypothesis testing in the confirmatory phase.

ABSTRACT. Heirs’ property, land passed through generations without a clear title, may play a role in wealth inequality and present challenges to the economic well-being of families and communities. Researchers have broadly documented issues and problems with heirs’ property ownership. However, few studies look at the spatial clustering of heirs’ property parcels on a broad scale. There is also little research on how this clustering may correlate with regional wealth/income inequality. This paper contributes to the evolving heirs’ property literature by examining the relationship between wealth inequality and clusters of heirs’ property parcels and their neighboring effects. This study examines if and how heirs’ property prevalence contributes to regional wealth inequality. To do this, We utilize spatial analysis, including hot-spot analysis, Moran’s I, and spatial econometric models (for instance, the spatial lag model). These spatial analyses identify how uneven wealth inequality patterns correlate with a higher level of heirs’ property at the county level in the U.S., particularly by examining the direct and indirect effects of heirs’ property and other socio-economic characteristics on the wealth gap. The preliminary results show clear spatial patterns of heirs’ property distribution and wealth gap. Heirs’ property clusters are found across Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and West Virginia and along with south Texas, Blackbelt, and Central Appalachia (which is composed of most counties in eastern Kentucky and few counties in southwest Virginia and West Virginia, and northeast Tennessee).

As a preliminary model, the spatial lag model in equation (1) is proposed considering the characteristics of a county and its neighbors to address heirs’ property and socio-economic factors contributing to wealth inequality and figure out spatial dependence. y=Xβ+ρWy+ε (1) where y notates the wealth gap as an index, and Wy is the wealth gap of the neighboring county as set by the weights matrix (W). A queen-one contiguity weights matrix (W) is applied for the model to measure the geographic relationships based on all of the counties which share their boundary points. ρ represents the autoregressive parameter. X is the matrix of geographic and socio-economic variables, including the prevalence of heirs’ property as a percentage of the total number of county parcels, racial proportions, income and asset poverty, education, rurality, and south dummy. Direct and indirect effects are calculated based on this model, reflecting the spatial structure, i.e. [(I-ρW)]^(-1) β. The mean of the diagonal terms of the matrix defines the direct effect of heirs’ property on wealth inequality. The indirect effect (spillover effect) is represented as the mean of the off-diagonal terms coming from neighboring counties’ heirs’ property. The results would provide an improved understanding of 1) which community is more likely to experience having greater heirs’ property in their community and 2) how heirs’ property relates to the community’s and its neighbors’ wealth inequality status.

ABSTRACT. Melody Muldrow, Ph.D. Candidate University of Missouri February 2023

Abstract

Wealth provides individuals the "freedom" to pursue opportunities actively (Robeyns, 2011). In addition, wealth provides individuals the luxury to take "risks and shield individuals against financial loss" (Hamilton, 2020). Yet, freedom can only occur when an individual's opportunities coincide with the ability to attain the opportunities.

This study will employ the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition and incorporate a spatial panel data model to evaluate the geographical effects of states like Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, and North and South Carolina on Black Americans' opportunities. Incorporating O'Connell's characterization of slavery (2014), the study contends that the geographical location of these states plays a considerable part in creating inequality of opportunities for Black Americans (Jann, 2008; & Van der Klink et al., 2016). Furthermore, O'Connell suggests that the legacy of slavery will have a different impact base on the area tied to slavery (2012). Thus, according to O'Connell's argument, states like Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, and North and South Carolina's ties to slavery will have a greater impact since the legacy of slavery has become embedded in the "social and legal traditions of states, or areas within the state" (2012).

This study will use a panel data model to measure how economic structure, educational attainment, geographical location, and the legacy of slavery impacted the fifty U.S. States' wealth level observed over ten years from 2010 through 2019. Understanding the interconnections of history, geography, and opportunity can aid policy-making efforts and yield sustainable socio-economic outcomes for Black Americans and other minoritized populations.

References

Hamilton, D. (2020). The Moral Burden on Economists: Darrick Hamilton's 2017 NEA Presidential Address. The Review of Black Political Economy, 47(4), 331-342. Jann, B. (2008). The Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition for linear regression models. The Stata Journal, 8(4), 453-479. O'Connell, H. A. (2012). The impact of slavery on racial inequality in poverty in the contemporary U.S. South. Social Forces, 90(3), 713-734. Robeyns, I. (2011). The capability approach. Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. Online]. http://plato. stanford. edu/entries/capability-approach. Van der Klink, J. J., Bültmann, U., Burdorf, A., Schaufeli, W. B., Zijlstra, F. R., Abma, F. I., ... & Van der Wilt, G. J. (2016). Sustainable employability—definition, conceptualization, and implications: a perspective based on the capability approach. Scandinavian journal of work, environment & health, 71-79.

ABSTRACT. Jim Crow laws targeted African American neighborhoods for higher property taxes. In the 1950s and most of 1960s, this accelerated to encourage black migration out of the South. Reforms in the 1970s and 1980s attempted to reverse this. Yet reform in larger cities was complicated by a prior need to reform city ward governing systems. So, in the late 1980s, cities and urban counties also reformed property taxation. Several works have found the bias disappeared, especially in Atlanta where many of the leading lights of the civil rights movement led city government directly or served as legislative representatives to state and federal bodies.

Using high resolution demographic data, property assessment and taxation data, and updated housing characteristics, such as square footage, we compared property taxes to specific property sales in 2016 and 2017 across Atlanta. We find over-taxing of African Americans, measured by ratios of tax-to-sales price and tax-to-assessed value, continues systematically – even in Atlanta. In part because Jim Crow era collected housing information selectively, a desire for continuity of information to assess economic trends occluded key assessment information, creating a latent structural bias.

ABSTRACT. We estimate the effects of universal cash transfers on hospital visits from Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD), an annual lump-sum payment to all Alaska residents comprising approximately 6% of an average household’s annual income. Using the universe of hospital discharges in Alaska from 2015 to 2018, we find that elective are not sensitive to the PFD but the number of urgent/emergent visits decline in the weeks before the receipt receipt in our aggregate analysis. When we decompose our results, we uncover considerable heterogeneity in the effect of the PFD by place of residence and expected payer with rural residents being much more responsive.

ABSTRACT. We analyze an office environment with two types of workers. The first type believes that masks offer little or no protection against Covid-19 and hence this type does not wear a mask. The second type wants to protect itself from Covid-19 and therefore this type does wear a mask. By not wearing a mask, the first type of worker imposes an externality on the second type of worker. In this setting, we accomplish five tasks. First, ignoring the externality, we compute the number of hours during which the first type of worker does not wear a mask. Second, we ascertain the socially optimal number of hours during which a worker of the first type ought not to wear a mask. Third, we determine the optimal tax needed to decentralize the social optimum. Fourth, assuming that there is no mask mandate, we analyze the outcome when we allow for Coasian bargaining between the two types of workers. Finally, assuming that there is a mask mandate, we study the outcome when, once again, there is Coasian bargaining between the two types of workers.

ABSTRACT. We study a one-period model of an aggregate economy composed of cities and regions that demand vaccines designed to fight a pandemic such as Covid-19. The supply of vaccines is the outcome of Bertrand competition between two firms A and B. The marginal cost of producing the vaccine for both firms is stochastic and drawn from a uniform distribution. In this setting, we perform three tasks. First, we describe the equilibrium pricing strategies of the two firms and then we compute their mean ex ante profits. Second, we permit both firms to conduct risky R&D and then determine the conditions under which only one firm engages in R&D and conditions under which both do. Finally, we introduce a way of mimicking the effect of increased competition and then analyze the impact of this increased competition on the incentives to conduct R&D faced by the two firms.

ABSTRACT. We investigate the effects of recreational marijuana legalization on state economic and social outcomes between 2000 and 2020. Using a difference-in-differences strategy and including state fixed-effects, time-varying controls, and state linear time trends, we find moderate and significant increases for some measures of economic and social costs as well as benefits. Post-legalization, self-reported marijuana usage increased by 20 percent. We find no significant changes in illicit drug use, chronic homelessness, or labor force participation. However, we find a 10 percent increase in substance abuse disorder and an 11 percent increase in arrests driven by increased property crimes. On the positive side, we find an average increase in state income per capita of 3 percent, driven mainly by increases in proprietors' income and wages. Our results suggest that the benefits of recreational legalization are widely distributed, while the costs are not as easily found in aggregate state-level data.

ABSTRACT. Rurality is a fluid concept with no single definition. Most definitions have a couple commonalities. First, they identify agglomerations of individuals and, often by proxy, economic activity. Second, they identify areas outside of that agglomeration that are tied into that urban agglomeration, a la Central Place Theory. However, when establishing the connections between places, oftentimes the impact that physical geography and built infrastructure has on accessibility is ignored or is established through proxies like commuting flows. In this paper, we are concerned with travel to urban locations. Specifically, we analyze whether travel times measured using speed limits are different than those of a ground-truthed benchmark, such as Google. We further analyze whether measurement differences vary across terrain, studying whether travel to urban locations across difficult terrain is different than on flatter terrain. To accomplish this, we use a rugged terrain index that captures the heterogeneity of land elevation to define which locations have “difficult terrain.” Then we use statistical analysis to compare travel times across travel time measurements and varied terrain classifications

ABSTRACT. Millions of people died in the United States from COVID-19. One method at the beginning of the pandemic employed to halt the spread of the virus were stay-at-home orders. The effects of stay-at-home orders on different distributions of housing prices in 101 housing markets were investigated in this study. To estimate the effects of executive orders on house prices, an unconditional quantile regression model was employed for analysis. Results suggest that lower-priced houses experienced a larger price increase while the executive order was in effect. Following the expiration of the executive order, larger price increases were observed in both lower and higher priced house markets. Using a binary logit model, we examined whether socioeconomic or demographic characteristics affect executive orders. Results suggest that more black individuals and democrats make home price increases more likely under an executive order at certain quantiles.

ABSTRACT. Leadership education programs for local elected officials can generate substantial public benefits by building the capacity of community leaders. The intent of leadership education programs is to equip leaders with the skills necessary to promote sustainable development and successfully navigate the increasingly complex challenges facing local governments, such as rapid population growth, responding to natural disasters, and adapting to a digital world (McKee et al. 2016). Leadership education programs can also benefit universities by creating goodwill among important stakeholders, internship and employment opportunities for students, and research ideas for faculty (Thomson 2010).

Given the importance of skillful leadership, equitable access to leadership education programs is critical. Rural counties with limited resources and staff arguably have less access to these programs. Little research has been done on barriers to leadership education programs for elected officials, especially those representing rural, resource-constrained counties. This study addresses the gap in the literature by exploring access to and attitudes towards leadership education programs for county commissioners offered by the Institute for County Government in partnership with UF|IFAS Extension.

We utilize data from the Institute of County Government to examine whether urban and rural county commissioners graduate at the same rates from three leadership education programs. We also use data from a survey of 120 county commissioners to measure attitudes towards leadership education programs and identify potential barriers to participation. An initial descriptive analysis reveals that county commissioners from rural counties graduate at equal or higher rates, providing potential support that there is equitable access to the leadership education programs offered by UF|IFAS Extension. Second, our survey suggests that Florida county commissioners have positive attitudes towards leadership education programs and believe it improves the quality of local government. Implications for other leadership education programs at land grand universities targeting elected officials and opportunities for future research are discussed.

References McKee, Valerie, Summer Odom, Lori Moore, and Theresa Murphrey. 2016. “Impacts of an Agricultural Leadership Extension Program for County Officials.” Journal of Agricultural Education 57 (4): 202–16. https://doi.org/10.5032/jae.2016.04202. Thomson, Dale E. 2010. “The Evolving Role of Universities in Expanding Knowledge among Local Elected Officials.” Journal of Public Affairs Education 16 (3): 421–50. https://doi.org/10.1080/15236803.2010.12001607.

ABSTRACT. Restaurants and bars worldwide have observed significant changes in recent decades. The relative size of the food services industry has significantly increased, including new players, ingredients, consumer preferences, and the adoption of new management strategies affecting value chains worldwide. This paper employs a multi-country input-output model (the World Input-Output Database) to decompose the food services industry value chain worldwide. The method is applied to 43 distinct economies between 2000 and 2015. The results allow us to highlight two critical findings. First, when looking at the whole spectrum of inputs used by this industry, food services are relying more on specialized services like computer programming, marketing, and legal services, while essential inputs like agriculture, fishery products, and other food products are becoming relatively less important. Secondly, in the countries observed, the food services industry is more dependent on imported products than on domestic products. This last finding also highlights that restaurants and bars worldwide offer more diverse gastronomy and are looking to satisfy a clientele that increasingly demands food and ingredients that used to be exclusively found in other countries.

ABSTRACT. Tropical cyclones (TCs) can cause considerable loss to agriculture, including direct physical damages to crops, livestock, and animal production, and destruction of farm infrastructure such as buildings, farm equipment, irrigation systems, etc. Rapid and accurate estimates of agricultural damage and loss due to hazard events are vital to farmers and stakeholders and essential for decision making related to aid for and the sustainability of agricultural production. To date, data availability and the unique characteristics of agricultural production have limited the timeliness, accuracy, and defensibility of estimates as well as the level of detail provided. This persistent lack of reliable data and insights impedes a complete understanding of the economic consequences of natural disasters in agriculture. In this paper, we developed a suite of reliable and ready-to-use baseline data and allied methods to produce timely and accurate estimates of direct agricultural production loss after a tropical cyclone event in Florida. We highlight some of the issues identified in agricultural data sources and how a baseline data framework can contribute to decision support and policy development.

ABSTRACT. This presentation provides a first look at the Wisconsin Broadband Survey, a statewide, random sample mail survey focusing on Internet access and affordability. The first part of the presentation will provide a descriptive analysis of the survey, considering how residents access the Internet, what they use it for, and how much they pay. Attention will be given to the relationship between income and cost of service. The presentation will also include a preliminary analysis on the willingness to pay for broadband from the discrete choice portion of the survey.

ABSTRACT. This paper explores the impact of the 2021 strike in Cali, Colombia on housing prices using regression discontinuity methods to highlight the impact. Butts (2022) highlighted that using circular defined treated groups and control groups observed from Kernel models can be misleading, and proposed new method to avoid this issue, our paper confirms the issue and explore further results. We control for police presence and strike points that last longer. Our results highlight a decrease in 6 to 15% in asking price.

ABSTRACT. Entrepreneurship is a key driver of regional economies, and one of its most important aspects is its role in job creation and employment growth. The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), a benefit for working low-income individuals, may be one policy that may impact the job creation aspects of entrepreneurship. While the main beneficiary is the recipient of the credit, employers are able to capture some of the surplus by paying lower wages. The wage savings from the EITC may influence the decision to open, expand, contract, and shutdown. Using a contiguous cross-border county analysis, I find that the difference in the number of establishment births (hiring of the first employee), and expansions significantly decreases between counties with a state EITC policy and their cross-border counterpart without such a policy, upon implementation of the tax credit. These results hold both for differences in the existence of the policy and differences in the generosity of the policy and are particularly strong in rural counties where labor markets are relatively thinner in comparison to more populous counties. This suggests a trade-off between the increased labor supply effects of the EITC and decreased labor demand.

ABSTRACT. The War on Terror was an enormous undertaking. Lasting over 20 years, it is estimated to have cost \$8 trillion dollars and 900,000 lives. Despite this, there is little causal evidence on whether the effort accomplished its primary goal of reducing terrorism. We classify groups contained in the Global Terrorism Database into Islamic-militant, Islamic-inspired, and other terrorist groups. Next, we compare terrorism events by Islamic-militant groups to other groups using difference-in-differences analysis. We analyze two important points in the War on Terror: the beginning of hostilities in Afghanistan and the assassination of Osama bin Laden. We find that the beginning of hostilities in Afghanistan did not reduce global militant Islamic terrorism and that a significant rise in militant Islamic terrorism followed the bin Laden assassination. This is consistent with other studies that find that when terrorist group leaders are killed additional violence often follows as group members compete for leadership. Unfortunately, this finding suggests that the world is not more safe from Islamic terrorism today.