EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

The Economics of Military Spending: Is the Military Dollar Really Different

G. Adams and D. A. Gold
Additional contact information
G. Adams: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
D. A. Gold: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

Chapter 13 in Peace, Defence and Economic Analysis, 1987, pp 266-301 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract The economic impact of military spending has become a subject of intense debate in the USA with the dramatic increases in US military spending of the 1980s. The Defense Department and industry argue that defence spending creates jobs and promotes economic health. Critics argue that such spending is inflationary, saps productivity and technology, and creates fewer jobs than other federal spending. This chapter reviews these claims and concludes that the economic impact of military spending is only marginally different from that of other forms of federal spending. It is not uniquely inflationary, has an unclear relationship to productivity and technological development, and does not create significantly different numbers of jobs. Military spending does, however, affect regions, sectors of industry and segments of the labour market in different ways from other federal spending. Through these effects, a ‘political economy’ of military spending emerges, where decisions on levels of US military spending and on specific weapons programmes are supported by microeconomic impacts. The economics of military spending involves public policy choices about the directions of national security policy and about national economic development; the macroeconomic issues are, at best, of marginal importance.

Keywords: Military Expenditure; Military Spending; Task Force Report; Defence Spending; Federal Spending (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1987
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:pal:intecp:978-1-349-18898-7_13

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9781349188987

DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-18898-7_13

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in International Economic Association Series from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-23
Handle: RePEc:pal:intecp:978-1-349-18898-7_13