Abstract
This paper empirically investigates whether there is a negative relationship between the impact of
terrorism in a country and national morality. A negative relationship between terrorism and national
morality is predicted to exist, because it is reasoned that, in general, greater national morality leads to
higher individual and social costs of terrorism, and to lower individual and social benefits from
terrorism. Given the standard neoclassical assumption of rationality, an increase in the cost benefit
ratio of terrorism due to increased national morality means that, with increased national morality,
individuals will rationally choose to engage in less terrorism.The paper uses cross country regression
analysis on contemporary data to test these ideas. It regresses the impact of terrorism on national
morality and other variables. The results of the empirics of the paper are consistent with the key
theoretical hypothesis. They show that the impact of terrorism is negatively associated with national
morality