The Economics of Military Spending

Book description

The Economics of Military Spending offers a comprehensive analysis of the effect of military expenditures on the economy. It is the first book to provide both a theoretical and an empirical investigation of how military spending affects the profit rate, a key indicator of the health of a capitalist economy.

The book presents a general discussion on the economic models of the nexus of military spending and economic growth, as well as military Keynesianism and the military-industrial complex. Including an account of the Marxist crisis theories, it focuses on military spending as a counteracting factor to the tendency of rate of profit to fall. Using a range of econometric methods and adopting a Marxist perspective, this book provides comprehensive evidence on the effects of military spending on the rate of profit for more than thirty countries. The findings of the book shed light on the complex linkages between military spending and the profit rate by considering the role of countries in the arms trade.

Offering a Marxist perspective and an emphasis on quantitative analysis, The Economics of Military Spending will be of great interest to students and scholars of defence and peace economics, as well as Marxist economics.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Half Title
  3. Series
  4. Title
  5. Copyright
  6. Dedication
  7. Contents
  8. List of figures
  9. List of tables
  10. Foreword
  11. Acknowledgements
  12. List of abbreviations
  13. 1 Introduction
    1. A brief history of military expenditure
    2. Strategic and economic motives for military expenditure
    3. Economic effect of military expenditure
  14. 2 Economic models of the military expenditure-growth nexus
    1. Introduction
    2. Economic models
      1. The Feder-Ram model
      2. Deger-Smith model
      3. Augmented Solow-Swann growth model
      4. Endogenous growth model
      5. New macroeconomic model
      6. Causality approach
    3. Brief literature survey
  15. 3 Military Keynesianism and the military-industrial complex
    1. Introduction
    2. Military Keynesianism and its effect
    3. John Kenneth Galbraith on the military-industrial complex
    4. Military-industrial complex today
  16. 4 Marxist crisis theories
    1. Introduction
    2. Underconsumption/stagnation theories
    3. Profit/wage squeeze theories
    4. Tendency for the rate of profit to fall
      1. Marx’s law of the tendency for the rate of profit to fall
      2. A brief overview of the debates
      3. Issues on the measurement of the rate of profit
      4. Empirical literature
  17. 5 The effect of military expenditure on profitability in Marxist theories
    1. Marx and Engels on military expenditure
    2. Rosa Luxemburg
    3. Baran and Sweezy, and other underconsumptionists
    4. The theory of the permanent arms economy
    5. Debates on the role of milex on the economy
      1. Sweezy versus Szymanski
      2. Smith versus Hartley and McLean and Chester
      3. Gottheil versus Riddell and Cypher
      4. Dunne and Smith versus Pivetti
    6. Empirical work on the effect on the profit rate
    7. Conclusion
    8. Appendix: A circuit of capital model with a military sector
      1. Adding aggregate demand
      2. The effect of military expenditure on the realisation lag
  18. 6 An econometric analysis of the nexus of military expenditure and the profit rate
    1. Introduction
    2. Literature survey
    3. Data
    4. Method
    5. Results and discussion
    6. Conclusion
  19. 7 Analysis of the nexus of military expenditure and profit: country cases
    1. Introduction
    2. Literature survey
    3. Data
    4. Method
      1. ARDL bounds testing approach
      2. Non-linear ARDL
      3. Markov switching model
      4. Toda-Yamamoto method
    5. Results and discussion
      1. Results for U.S.A.
      2. Summary of the long-term results of all countries
    6. Conclusion
  20. 8 Conclusion
  21. Appendix A: Panel studies (dependent variable is PWT Profit)
  22. Appendix B: Time-series analyses
  23. Appendix C: Toda-Yamamoto procedure results
  24. Index

Product information

  • Title: The Economics of Military Spending
  • Author(s): Adem Yavuz Elveren
  • Release date: May 2019
  • Publisher(s): Routledge
  • ISBN: 9780429774485