Military Expenditures and Income Inequality Evidence from a Panel of Transition Countries (1990-2015)

Raul Caruso () and Antonella Biscione
Additional contact information
Antonella Biscione: European Center of Peace Science, Integration and Cooperation CESPIC; Catholic University 'Our Lady of Good Counsel'

No 1002, Working Papers from European Centre of Peace Science, Integration and Cooperation (CESPIC), Catholic University 'Our Lady of Good Counsel'

Abstract: This paper contributes to the literature on military spending by analyzing the relationship between military spending and income inequality in a panel of transition economies over the period 1990-2015. In particular, we exploit three different measures of military expenditures: (i) the military spending in absolute terms; (ii) the military expenditures per capita; (iii) the military burden, namely the ratio between military expenditure and GDP. Findings highlight a positive relationship between military expenditures and income inequality captured by means of three different measures of inequality. Results are also confirmed after we performed a variety of robustness tests. However, other results are worth noting and contradictory. For example, military conscription appears to have a redistributional effect and when considering a non-linearity the results show that there could be a concave relationship between military spending and income inequality. In addition, when testing for the ‘crowding-out argument’ results show that expenditures for subsidies are negatively influenced by military spending so confirming the crowding-out argument but there is no significant evidence when considering education and health expenditures.

Keywords: military expenditures; inequality income; human capital; political regime (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H56 I24 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 pages
Date: 2018-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-tra
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://repec.unizkm.edu.al/pea/wpaper/WP_CARUSOBISCIONE.pdf First version, 2018 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden

Related works:
Journal Article: Military Expenditures and Income Inequality Evidence from a Panel of Transition Countries (1990-2015) (2021)
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:pea:wpaper:1002

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from European Centre of Peace Science, Integration and Cooperation (CESPIC), Catholic University 'Our Lady of Good Counsel' Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Raul Caruso ().