ABSTRACT
The thousands of people who are killed or injured in terrorist attacks each year are the victims of purposeful human action. On each occasion that a terrorist attack is planned and carried out, the people responsible fully expect some positive amount of injury and fatality to result. Regardless of the justifications or overarching political, religious or ideological objectives that might be brought to bear to account for these actions, the immediate objective in each and every case is the operational objective: successfully carrying out the attack. Rational brutality is more difficult to comprehend than brutal rationality, but it is decidedly unhelpful to declare once and for all the irrationality of terrorist behaviour and thereby rule out the possibility that economics can make any inroads into the development of our understanding of terrorism and the law enforcement challenges it presents. Rational behaviour is purposeful behaviour, and the brutality of terrorist groups is purposeful. An economics perspective highlights this more clearly than any other.
