scholarly journals The Relationships between Military Expenditures and Unemployment in G-20 States

Author(s):  
Ahmet Fatih Aydemir ◽  
Dilek Özdemir ◽  
Ömer Selçuk Emsen

The effects of the military expenditure on the economic growth and consequently on the employment has been the primary topic of the discussing in the literature of economics. Considering that the military expenditures generally emerge as a sub-item of the public spending, it has been asserted by the liberal approach that the principle of the non-productiveness of the public sector would be even more applicable in the military expenditures. None the less, using the military spending as a tool to lead an economy that feature underemployment constitutes the positive aspect of the views to the military expenditure and this is also the case of the prediction of the Keynesian economy. In this study, the effects of the military expenditure on the unemployment, which is a reflection of the effects of the economic growth, are analyzed as the subject matter. The findings revealed that the military spending has positive effects on the unemployment in some G20 states while it also has negative effects in some and has neutral effects in others. In addition, it is further indicated that the positive effects are experienced in relatively advanced economies, the negative effects emerge in relatively less developed economies, and the countries with abundant natural resources experience neutral effects.

2008 ◽  
pp. 142-172 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Kentor ◽  
Edward Kick

After the “peace bonus” era, global military expenditures have escalated sharply despite some worldwide declines in military personnel. Theories on the economic impacts of the military institution and escalated military spending greatly differ and include arguments that they either improve domestic economic performance or crowd out growth-inducing processes. Empirical findings on this matter are inconclusive, in part due to a failure to disentangle the various dimensions of military expenditures. We further suggest that modern sociology's relative inattention to such issues has contributed to these shortcomings. We explore a new dimension of military spending that clarifies this issue—military expenditures per soldier —which captures the capital intensiveness of a country’s military organization. Our cross-national panel regression and causal analyses of developed and less developed countries from 1990 to 2003 show that military expenditures per soldier inhibit the growth of per capita GDP, net of control variables, with the most pronounced effects in least developed countries. These expenditures inhibit national development in part by slowing the expansion of the labor force. Labor-intensive militaries may provide a pathway for upward mobility, but comparatively capital-intensive military organizations limit entry opportunities for unskilled and under- or unemployed people. Deep investments in military hardware also reduce the investment capital available for more economically productive opportunities. We also find that arms imports have a positive effect on economic growth, but only in less developed countries.


Author(s):  
Saptarshi Chakraborty

Some countries spend a relatively large percentage of GDP on their militaries in order to preserve or secure their status as global powers. Others do so because they are ruled by military governments or aggressive regimes that pose a military threat to their neighbors or their own populations. It is debatable whether there is a causal relationship between military spending and economic growth in the economy. It is again a policy debate how much to allocate funds for civilian and how much for military expenditure. Under these puzzling results of the impact of military expenditure on economic growth which is frequently found to be non-significant or negative, yet most countries spend a large fraction of their GDP on defense and the military. The chapter tries to investigate the relationship between military spending and economic growth in India. It also sees whether external threats, corruption, and other relevant controls have any causal effect. This chapter obtains that additional expenditure on Indian military in the presence of additional threat is significantly detrimental to growth implying that India cannot afford to fight or demonstrate power at the cost of its development.


Author(s):  
Dilek Özdemir ◽  
Cevat Gerni ◽  
Ahmet Fatih Aydemir ◽  
Ömer Selçuk Emsen

It cannot be said that military expenditure and economic growth relationship have reached a consensus both theoretically and empirically. The basic argument of the claim that military spending will increase national income is that if the economy is unemployed, the increase in spending, including military spending, will increase national income by expanding demand. Whereas, the argument that military spending will have a negative impact on the national income is claimed due to causing the inefficiency of the resources in the economy and thus to suppress the growth by causing resource mobility from productive sectors to the non-productive sectors. On the purpose of determining which of these two opposing ideas whether committed in Turkey’s economy, military expenditures have been added to Solow growth model and econometric analyzes have involved the period of 1980-2016. In the light of findings, it is revealed that second type of hypothesis is valid that military spending has a negative effect on economic growth.


2020 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anders Kärnä

AbstractIncomplete capital markets and credit constraints for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are often considered obstacles to economic growth, thus motivating government interventions in capital markets. While such policies are common, it is less clear to what extent these interventions result in firm growth or to which firms interventions should be targeted. Using a unique dataset with information about state bank loans targeting credit-constrained SMEs in Sweden with and without complementary private bank loans, this paper contributes to the literature by studying how these loans affect the targeted firms for several outcome variables. The results suggest that the loans create a one-off increase in investments, with long-term, positive effects for sales and labor productivity but only for firms with 10 or fewer employees. Increased access to capital by firms can therefore produce increases in economic output but only in a specific type of firm. This insight is of key importance in designing policy if the aim is to increase economic growth.


2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Sloan ◽  
Willy Legrand ◽  
Claudia Simons-Kaufmann

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to report on preliminary research conducted in seven sustainable hospitality and tourism operations set in developing economies which use the principles of social entrepreneurship. The applicability of community-based social entrepreneurial management systems as a means of fostering socio-economic development is analysed. Design/methodology/approach – Online contacts were first made with the selected destinations, who were asked to supply written reports on selected criteria. Purposive sampling was employed, whereby the criteria chosen for analysis were based on characteristics believed to be representative. Analysis of the reports was based on the meaning of words, in particular, in finding commonalities and differences in themes approached by each respondent. Findings – Preliminary conclusions show that the positive effects of employing local indigenous people in these projects far outweigh some negative aspects. Employment possibilities leading to improved living standards have resulted in each case. Local cultural traditions have been maintained and only in a few cases were examples of the negative effects of tourism reported. Research limitations/implications – The findings of this research are limited to a small selection of community-based social entrepreneurial hospitality and tourism projects in developing economies, thus, cannot be applied to similar projects in developed economies, where social and economic factors are considerably different. Originality/value – In developing economies, social entrepreneurs can draw on the success of the projects analysed in this paper for the creation of new, similar ventures. In developed economies, hospitality and tourism businesses wishing to pursue a more socially caring form of development can gain inspiration.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (12) ◽  
pp. 5053 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ran Tao ◽  
Oana Ramona Glonț ◽  
Zheng-Zheng Li ◽  
Oana Ramona Lobonț ◽  
Adina Alexandra Guzun

Military spending and sustainable economic development have been widely discussed in recent decades. Especially in Romania, the defense budget is valued at $4.8 billion, registering a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 23.57%. It is also expected to reach $7.6 billion in 2023, according to a report by Strategic Defense Intelligence. There is no consensus in current research and less attention is paid to Eastern European countries. Considering the significant increase in military spending in Romania in recent years, as well as the occurrence of political events, this paper focuses on the dynamic causal relationship between military spending and sustainable economic growth in Romania. The bootstrap rolling window causality test takes into account the structural changes, and therefore, provides more convincing results. The results indicate negative effects of military expenditure on sustainable economic growth between 1996–1999 and 2002–2004. It can be attributed to the crowding-out effect of public expenditure on private investment. The positive effect between the two variables analyzed is noticed with the accession of Romania to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Conversely, it is found that economic growth does not have a significant effect on military spending in Romania. Policymakers should guard against the crowding out of private consumption and investment due to excessive military spending and ensure to increase military expenditure on the premise of sustainable economic development.


2019 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 606-628
Author(s):  
Eleonora Gentilucci

The political economy of defense spending is enormously important given its magnitude and its global implication. Since the late 1990s, world and US military spending has being rising. This trend appears to be in sharp contrast to the long-term forecast about the so-called “peace dividend” formulated after the fall of the Berlin Wall. In order to explain this trend of military expenditures in the United States, the restructuring of the defense sector (in terms of concentration and financialization), the shift from a focus on “defense” to “security,” and the role and influence of “vested interests” in this process leading to the creation of the military-security system, are taken into consideration. The relation between social spending and military expenditures is also discussed.JEL Classification: H56, H5, B5, F52, L16


2019 ◽  
Vol 56 (3) ◽  
pp. 352-363 ◽  
Author(s):  
Filiz Yesilyurt ◽  
M Ensar Yesilyurt

This article conducts a meta-analysis of the effect of military expenditures on growth within a structured analytic framework. We extend the pioneering study of Aynur Alptekin and Paul Levine, by using a much larger sample of studies. Like them we confine our attention to studies that use the share of military expenditure in GDP, the military burden, as the independent variable, but unlike them we include not just those that use the military burden directly, what we call the core sample, but also those that use other functions of it, such as logarithms, differences, etc., which we call the remaining sample. We also consider an overall sample which pools all results. The t-statistic on the coefficient of military burden is used as the dependent variable. Our null hypothesis is that military expenditure has no significant effect on growth and we explain why this is plausible. The estimates are sensitive to the sample and type of data used, estimation method adopted, and the controls included. Overall, the results are consistent with the hypothesis of no effect: the average effect across all studies is close to zero. Certain study characteristics appear significant determinants of the effect of military expenditure on growth, but there does not appear to be a simple pattern and different characteristics were significant in the three samples. This might be a result of data mining to produce a significant result. However, there does not appear to be strong evidence of publication bias towards positive or negative results, perhaps because there is no strong a priori belief in the direction of the effect.


Author(s):  
Özgür Ömer Ersin ◽  
Melike Bildirici

The study aims to evaluate the economic growth process and the macroeconomic factors, namely, the inflation rates, the value added in the production taken as a proxy of productivity and openness to trade for the selected Eurasian transition economies. The paper focuses on the transition period and the economic performance achieved following the independence of the analyzed countries. By using a sample that consists of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, the relationship between economic growth with inflation, trade openness and value added obtained by the national industries are evaluated within a panel setting. The dataset is investigated with traditional and structural break unit root tests followed by panel regression analyses. Considering the findings in the literature which suggest either statistically insignificant or having positive or negative effects of inflation on growth depending on the countries analyzed, the empirical findings of the paper are in favor of negative effects of inflation on growth: though the size of the effect of inflation rates on growth in rather small, negative effect of inflation cannot be rejected. Further, the positive effects of value added in the production which is taken as a proxy to productivity shows significant positive impacts on growth. Similarly, openness to international trade is shown to have positive impacts for the transition countries analyzed. The results are in favor of the findings in literature suggesting that “it is not the inflation rates, rather than the variation in inflation” which could limit economic growth. The findings for openness and value added suggest policies to enhance productivity and international trade to accelerate the economic growth in the transition economies.


2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-5
Author(s):  
Гаяне Арутюнян ◽  
Gayane Harutyunyan

Research of the relationship between economic growth and military expenditures has been one of the central issues in the economic debates since 1980s, but the theorists failed to come to consensus on this issue via empirical studies. Hence, studies of some statistical evidence suggest logical question: whether military expenditures contribute to economic growth, or on the contrary, economic growth enables to increase countries military spending? In this paper, we have analyzed the main economic thought school’s approaches to assessment of military expenditure impact on growth, in order to reveal the mechanisms of this impact. Then by statistical analysis we have found out how the relationship between military expenditure and GDP was manifested in Armenia. Based on the analysis results, we concluded that military expenditures haven’t stimulated GDP growth in Armenia.


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