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THE EFFECT OF DEFENSE SPENDING ON US OUTPUT: A FACTOR AUGMENTED VECTOR AUTOREGRESSION (FAVAR) APPROACH

Rangan Gupta, Alain Kabundi () and Emmanuel Ziramba

No 200911, Working Papers from University of Pretoria, Department of Economics

Abstract: Empirical evidence on the effect of defense spending on US output is at best mixed. Against this backdrop, this paper assesses the impact of a positive defense spending shock on the growth rate of real GNP using a FAVAR model estimated with 116 variables spanning the quarterly period of 1976:01 to 2005:02. Overall, the results show that a positive shock to the growth rate of the real defense spending translates to a positive and long lasting effect on the growth rate of real GNP, but the effect is significant only for two quarters. In addition, we indicate that the mixed empirical evidence could be a result of small information sets, by showing the sensitivity of the results to sample size using a small-scale VAR typically used in the literature to analyze the effect of defense spending on output. Finally, given that the FAVAR model was found outperform the VAR in forecasting the growth rate of real GNP, we concluded that the FAVAR framework is superior and should be relied upon more for the analysis of the impact of defense spending on US output.

Keywords: Defense Spending; Output; FAVAR (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C32 C52 E27 H41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 10 pages
Date: 2009-03
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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