Hit or Miss? The Effect of Assassinations on Institutions and War
Author(s)
Jones, Benjamin F.; Olken, Benjamin A.
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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)
Date issued
2009-07Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of EconomicsJournal
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
ISSN
1945-7715
1945-7707