Terrorism and spatial disparities: Does interregional inequality matter?

•Does interregional inequality affect domestic terrorism?•Our sample includes 48 countries over the period 1990-2010.•We find that a high level of interregional inequality increases domestic terrorism.

This article examines the relationship between interregional inequality and the incidence of domestic terrorism in a panel of 48 countries over the period 1990-2010. The results show that a high level of interregional inequality increases the number of domestic terror events in the sample countries. This finding is robust to the inclusion of additional explanatory variables that may affect both interregional inequality and domestic terrorism. Furthermore, the observed link between interregional inequality and terrorist activity does not depend on the choice of the specific measure used to quantify the degree of dispersion in the regional distribution of GDP per capita within the sample countries.