Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Left-Wing And Right-Wing Terrorism In The United States, Alex Rant, Paul Jones, Nathanael Robinson

Seaver College Research And Scholarly Achievement Symposium

This paper assesses whether there is causality between Left-Wing and Right-Wing Terrorist attacks in the United States. A Vector Auto-Regressive (VAR) Model is estimated for the two variables. A Granger Causality test and Impulse Response Functions are examined to understand the relationship between the two variables. Both terrorist attacks appear to Granger Cause each other, but an analysis of the Impulse Response Functions reveals that Right-Wing Terrorism yields a stronger response from Left-Wing groups than Left-Wing terrorism does from Right-Wing groups. Nonetheless, there are strong elements of causality and response between the two groups.