What makes a terrorist : economics and the roots of terrorism : Lionel Robbins lectures Many popular ideas about terrorists and why they seek to harm us are fueled by falsehoods and misinformation. Leading politicians and scholars have argued that poverty and lack of education breed terrorism despite the wealth of evidence showing that most terrorists come from middle class and often college educated backgrounds. In What Makes a Terrorist Alan Krueger argues that if we are to correctly assess the root causes of terrorism and successfully address the threat we must think more like economists do. Krueger is an influential economist who has applied rigorous statistical analy