Pro Bono Publico? Demand for military spending between the World Wars

Jari Eloranta ()
Additional contact information
Jari Eloranta: Appalachian State University

No 15016, Working Papers from Economic History Society

Abstract: "This paper aims to analyze the aggregate and individual countries’ demand for military spending during the 1920s and 1930s, based on variables arising from the international system and the countries themselves. The main premise is that the military spending was an impure public good, implying that both public and private benefits drove the demand for this type of expenditure. Threats arising from the increased autocracy in the 1930s increased these expenditures, and democracies on the whole tended to spend less. Moreover, the absence of clear international leadership by the economic giants of the period, like US or UK, destabilized the international system and increased military spending. Military spending resulted in joint products at the level of state and within state, and the level of economic development seemed to exert a downward pressure on the military spending of these states. Rising prices of “defense” in general decreased their relative military spending. There were quite contradictory spillover effects felt by these states."

JEL-codes: H10 H41 H56 N40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-03
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.ehs.org.uk/dotAsset/4aab5d24-de08-4b8d-b2d5-0653c08d4eef.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.ehs.org.uk/dotAsset/4aab5d24-de08-4b8d-b2d5-0653c08d4eef.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://ehs.org.uk/dotAsset/4aab5d24-de08-4b8d-b2d5-0653c08d4eef.pdf)

Related works:
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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehs:wpaper:15016

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Economic History Society Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chair Public Engagement Committe (currently David Higgins - Newcastle) ().