UNPACKING THE GLOBALIZATION AND TERRORISM INTERFACE IN SAARC: EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE ACROSS ECONOMIC, SOCIAL & POLITICAL DIMENSIONS

Abstract

The primary objective of this study is to investigate the nexus between globalization and terrorism in South Asian countries from 2003 to 2017 using the PMG autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model. This study examines three components of globalization: economic, social, and political globalization. The empirical analysis is conducted in two steps. First, the panel ARDL model is estimated to derive short-run and long-run elasticities. Second, the Granger causality test is conducted to examine the causal relationships among the selected variables. The panel ARDL results indicate a long-run relationship between terrorism and the components of globalization. Political and economic globalization have a positive and statistically significant impact on terrorism, while total globalization also has a positive impact. Additionally, the Granger causality results reveal unidirectional causality running from terrorism to the Political Globalization Index (PGI), unidirectional causality from the Social Globalization Index (SGI) to terrorism, and unidirectional causality from the Total Globalization Index to terrorism.