The military recruiting productivity slowdown: The roles of resources, opportunity cost and the tastes of youth*

John Warner, Curtis Simon and Deborah Payne

Defence and Peace Economics, 2003, vol. 14, issue 5, 329-342

Abstract: After a decade of successful recruiting, the US military began experiencing recruiting difficulties in the 1990s. Cyclical factors as well as trend factors may have played a role. This paper uses monthly data by state over the period 1989-1997 to estimate models of enlistment and evaluate the various explanations for the recruiting slowdown. Estimates of the impact of economic variables - relative military pay and unemployment - and recruiting resource variables - recruiters and advertising - are similar to those in previous studies. Two trend factors, rising college attendance and declining adult veteran population (influencers), are found to be important factors explaining the decline in enlistment.

Keywords: Us Military; Recruitment; Opportunity Cost (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2003
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10242690302923 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:defpea:v:14:y:2003:i:5:p:329-342

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/GDPE20

DOI: 10.1080/10242690302923

Access Statistics for this article

Defence and Peace Economics is currently edited by Professor Keith Hartley

More articles in Defence and Peace Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().