Models of Military Expenditure and Growth: A Critical Review

John Dunne (), Ronald Smith () and Dirk Willenbockel ()

No 408, Discussion Papers from University of the West of England, Department of Economics

Abstract: This paper reviews some of the theoretical and econometric issues involved in estimating growth models that include military spending. While the mainstream growth literature has not found military expenditure to be a significant determinant of growth, much of the defence economics literature has found significant effects. The paper argues that this is largely the product of the particular specification, the Feder- Ram model, that has been used in the defence economics literature but not in the mainstream literature. The paper critically evaluates this model, detailing its problems and limitations and suggests that it should be avoided. It also critically evaluates two alternative theoretical approaches, the Augmented Solow and the Barro models, suggesting that they provide a more promising avenue for future research. It concludes with some general comments about modelling the links between military expenditure and growth.

Keywords: Military expenditure; models; growth (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev and nep-mac
Date: 2004-12
View list of references View citations in EconPapers

Downloads: (external link)
http://carecon.org.uk/DPs/0408.pdf First version, 2004 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: MODELS OF MILITARY EXPENDITURE AND GROWTH: A CRITICAL REVIEW (2005)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:uwe:wpaper:0408

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Papers from University of the West of England, Department of Economics
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by J Paul Dunne ().