Assessing the Effects of Military Expenditures on Growth

The earlier literature regarding the effects of military expenditures on economic growth had initially shown a positive relationship between the two variables. This article examines this topic, taking account of more recent models of growth. The second section considers the alternative general economic theories that inform the development of models to undertake empirical analyses. The third section considers estimation issues. The fourth section considers the alternative formal models that are common in the literature: the Feder-Ram model, the modified Solow model, and the endogenous growth models. The fifth section presents some empirical results to illustrate the issues involved in estimating the models and to compare their performance. The estimation of more sophisticated models indicates, contrary to the early studies, that the effect of military expenditures on growth is negative.