Hit or Miss? The Effect of Assassinations on Institutions and War
Name
Olken_Hit or.pdf
Size
541.55 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
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Author(s)
Jones, Benjamin F.
Olken, Benjamin A.
Date Issued
July 2009
Journal
American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics
Publisher
American Economic Association
Citation
Jones, Benjamin F., and Benjamin A. Olken. 2009. "Hit or Miss? The Effect of Assassinations on Institutions and War." American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, 1(2): 55–87. © 2009 AEA
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Assassinations are a persistent feature of the political landscape. Using a new dataset of assassination attempts on all world leaders from 1875 to 2004, we exploit inherent randomness in the success or failure of assassination attempts to identify the effects of assassination. We find that, on average, successful assassinations of autocrats produce sustained moves toward democracy. We also find that assassinations affect the intensity of small-scale conflicts. The results document a contemporary source of institutional change, inform theories of conflict, and show that small sources of randomness can have a pronounced effect on history. (JEL D72, N40, O17)
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Economics
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1257/mac.1.2.55
