After the 9/11 attacks, much of the political and media debate on terrorism has focused on prevention policies. The widespread view that poverty creates terrorism has dominated much of this debate. This is hardly surprising. After all, the notion that poverty generates terrorism is consistent with the results of most of the literature on the economics of conflicts. Because terrorism is a manifestation of political conflict, these results seem to indicate that poverty and adverse economic conditions may play an important role in explaining terrorism. Recent empirical studies, however, have challenged the view that poverty creates terrorism. Using US State Department data on transnational terrorist attacks, Alan B. Krueger and David L. Laitin and James A. Piazza find no evidence suggesting poverty may generate terrorism. Conversely, among countries with similar levels of civil liberties, richer countries seem to be preferred targets for transnational terrorist attacks. However, these studies may suffer, in principle, from some potential shortcomings.