"Guns, Butter, and Growth: The Consequences of Military Spending Reconsidered," with Heather Ondercin and Glenn Palmer. Under review.
How does increasing military spending affect social spending and economic growth? We argue leaders vary in their preferences over how to pay for military spending and failing to account for interdependence among methods of government finance, government spending, and economic performance limits scholars’ ability to identify the consequences of military spending. We use vector autoregressive models to estimate the relationships among military spending, social spending, economic growth, tax revenue, debt, and the money supply in the United States between 1947 and 2008. We find that increasing military spending has a non-linear effect on economic growth that varies over time and the existence of a guns-vs.-butter trade-off is conditional on leaders’ preferences regarding the social welfare state, taxes, debt, and inflation.
How does increasing military spending affect social spending and economic growth? We argue leaders vary in their preferences over how to pay for military spending and failing to account for interdependence among methods of government finance, government spending, and economic performance limits scholars’ ability to identify the consequences of military spending. We use vector autoregressive models to estimate the relationships among military spending, social spending, economic growth, tax revenue, debt, and the money supply in the United States between 1947 and 2008. We find that increasing military spending has a non-linear effect on economic growth that varies over time and the existence of a guns-vs.-butter trade-off is conditional on leaders’ preferences regarding the social welfare state, taxes, debt, and inflation.
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