How butter beats the Guns?

Konstantin Yanovsky and Ilia Zatcovetsky
Additional contact information
Konstantin Yanovsky: Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy
Ilia Zatcovetsky: Samuel Neaman Institute for Advanced Studies in Science and Technology
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Konstantin Moshe Yanovskiy

Working Papers from Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy

Abstract: The correlation of state spending on pure and mixed public goods reflects the making of fundamental choices about state functions. Are pure public good "defense" normal quality provision compatible in Long Run with heavy spending on social sector (i.e. compatible with mixed public goods provision)? The main hypotheses tested: elected politicians and bureaucrats’ have strong incentives to choose wrong strategies in foreign and military policies if the state extends its responsibility far from the pure public goods provision limits. The case study (Protocol 1, June 8, 1977, to the Geneva Convention of 1949) shows, how "punishment for military success" strategy undermines incentives of army officers, making the military machine virtually inoperative. Artificially abridged Army capability provides the argument for the notion "war is no solution". The set of the governments credibly ready to obey ratified Convention, are clearly segmented on two subsets. The 1st one includes the Governments bearing military responsibilities, military umbrella -givers, which abstained to impose all Protocol caused risks on the army officers (non-ratified – USA, Israel; ratified with strong reservations – UK, France, Germany) and the rest democratic countries – which are military umbrella takers, ratified the Protocol without significant reservations. Statistical analysis of Great Powers military spending historical trends used to test the main hypothesis. Preliminary statistical analysis fails to reject it. We believe bureaucratic competition for the responsibilities, staff and the budget provides satisfactory explanation of this phenomena.

Keywords: Budget Spending structure; pure public goods; mixed public goods; universal suffrage; military justice; military spending (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 D74 H11 H41 N40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28 pages
Date: 2014, Revised 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.iep.ru/files/RePEc/gai/wpaper/0104Yanovsky.pdf Revised version, 2014 (application/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:gai:wpaper:0104

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Aleksei Astakhov ().