Responding to Terror: An Empirical Analysis of U.S. Military Activity, Public Opinion, and Transnational Terrorism

Abstract

This article explores the relationship between U.S. military activity and transnational terrorism. We employ a vector autoregressive model to assess the impact and persistence of terrorism on military activity, measured by changes in military expenditures, within the context of a dynamic system. The results indicate terrorism granger causes military expenditures, and the accompanying impulse response function demonstrates the effect of terrorism on military expenditures persists 3 years pending an initial 1-year lag in impact, on average. We argue that public opinion may act as an intervening variable between terrorism and military activity and find evidence to support this claim.