The economic cost of march 11: measuring the direct economic cost of the terrorist attacck on March 11, 2004 in Madrid

Abstract

This paper measures the direct costs that the terrorist attacks of March 11 caused on the economy of the region of Madrid. The evaluation has been made applying a
conservative criterion, and the results obtained have to be considered as minimum. The result indicates that the terrorist attacks caused a loss of nearly 212 million euros to the
regional economy of Madrid, equivalent to 0,16 per cent of the regional GDP (0,03 of the national GDP). This confirms that the immediate economic dimension of a terrorist
attack such as the one of March 11 apart from human catastrophic consequences is relatively low.