February 26, 2008 By Robert Amsterdam

The Economics of Assassination

An interesting article about the intrepid economist Ben Olken brings to mind many questions about how the assassination of Anna Politkovskaya fails or succeeds in changing Russia:

Olken wonders whether economic devel­opment and the path to democratization are shaped more by broad historical forces or by the actions of specific leaders—be they demo­cratically elected prime ministers or thuggish authoritarians. With the assistance of his fre­quent research partner Ben Jones, an economist at Northwestern, Olken has challenged broadly held assumptions by publishing a pair of papers asking how heads of state affect economic out­comes and democracy.