Why is the Military Draft Common? Conscription and Increasing Returns

Yew-Kwang Ng ()

Annals of Economics and Finance, 2008, vol. 9, issue 2, 373-384

Abstract: It is well-known that if the required number of military personnel is large, paying the soldiers their hire may involve very high taxes. While conscription involves the inefficiency and unfairness of violating free choice, it may save significant distortionary costs of taxation. It is not well-known that, even in the absence of these distortionary costs, conscription may reduce the inequity of having very low marginal utilities for soldiers if they are paid enough to attract their voluntary services and very high marginal utilities for civilians if they have to pay very high taxes. Having all citizens serving an equal fraction of time may be inefficient as there are high degrees of increasing returns in military services due to both training costs and learning by doing. Conscription may then increase the expected utilities of all individuals.

Keywords: Conscription; Draft; Increasing returns; Efficiency; Equity; Fairness (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D60 H56 H80 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cuf:journl:y:2008:v:9:i:2:p:373-384

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