Comment on: ‘‘The open society assesses its enemies: shocks, disasters and terrorist attacks’’$

Terrorism has been, for a long time, a feature of countries in political transition. However, as the airplane attack on New York’s World Trade Center in 2001 and the bombing of Madrid’s Atocha Train Station in 2004 painfully showed, terrorism has recently spread to mature societies and become a global phenomenon. More than ever, terrorism is a subject that deserves attention from policy and academic perspectives. The causes and consequences of terrorism is a relatively unexplored topic in the economics and political science literatures, and Jos!e Tavares’ paper is a useful and promising start.