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We study the effect of a corruption reflection index on internal conflict in Iran using a novel measure of corruption based on newspaper coverage. We use the Vector Autoregression (VAR) model and its applied tools of impulse response and variance decomposition analyses to track the response of protests to shocks in corruption levels. Using annual data from 1962 to 2019, we find a positive and significant response of protests to a positive shock in the news-based corruption reflection index. We also show that economic growth and military spending are the main channels where higher corruption may lead to higher internal protests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Countries with different democratic levels tend to show various degrees of emphasis on military expenditure and a consensus can hardly be reached on the economic effect of democracy and military expenditure. By applying a panel vector autoregressive (PVAR) approach, this article examines the potential dynamic and endogenous relationships among democracy, military expenditure and economic growth of 126 countries from 1990 to 2020. Furthermore, the k-means clustering algorithm is employed to account for the heterogeneous interaction between democracy and military expenditure in different countries. The empirical results reveal that the strong positive impact of democracy and the negative effect of military spending on economic growth exists in the full sample and the cluster of countries with low democratic levels and a high military burden. For democratic countries with low military expenditure, there is a more significant and negative impact both of military expenditure on democracy and vice versa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to identify the main studies that research the relationship between defence spending and economic growth in a region, carried out on a large sample of 162 articles obtained from the Web of Science database, published between 1995 and 2019. By carrying out three analyses, descriptive, scientometric and content, the results have made it possible to identify the most outstanding characteristics of this relationship along with the main schools of thought. Furthermore, these can be grouped into one of the four proposed categories: positive relationship, negative, bidirectional or no relation at all. The state of the art has been evaluated and synthesized, establishing trends and areas for future research in this broad field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of national security threats on a nation's economic growth and fiscal policy based on a case study of the Korean peninsula. I construct four measures of provocations using a newly-assembled list of North Korean provocative events going back to 1960. The results show that the overall impact of North Korean provocations on South Korea's short-run economic growth is negligible. Since inter-Korean relations have gone through four phases, this paper also estimates the impact of provocations over each subperiod. Provocations had a significant impact on South Korea's economic growth during 1960-1970 and 1992-1997 when inter-Korean tensions were high, but the effects took on different signs. While provocations decreased South Korea's economic growth during 1992-1997, it had a positive impact on South Korea's macroeconomy before 1970. This paper provides evidence that the effect of national security threats may vary with the responses from the government and political factors such as the relation between the targeted country and the country that inflicts the threat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we study closely the relationship between arms exports, labor productivity and economic growth. Using a connectedness measurement technology fundamentally grounded in modern network theory, we determine the size and direction of the spillover effects between these three variables. Our findings indicate that shocks from arms exports have direct spillovers over the labor productivity and GDP growth, whereas the reverse is not captured by our data. We also provide a dynamic analysis of the spillovers that confirm the direction of spillovers from arms exports to the other variables. The recent evolution of arms exports from the United States together with the changes in arms exports policy show the timeliness of studying the effects of this particular trade to the rest of the economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explains the circumstances where economic growth increases the likelihood of interstate war. Optimism created by high and sustained economic expansion permeates a state, increasing elite and mass optimism for the use of deadly force. Without relief, such unbridled sanguinity can lead states to war. However, other forces reduce the probability of war. Regional democracy, bilateral trade, and trade openness slow down the process where states go to war. This paper hypothesizes that key factors raise the temperature of disputes, increasing the likelihood of a political dispute combusting to war, while other attributes inhibit the process to war. Economic growth catalyzes such reactions, while regional and joint democracy impede the probability that a war sparks. This paper produces monadic and dyadic results demonstrating that economic growth increases the likelihood of war, while other factors such as interstate trade openness, bilateral trade, dyadic democracy, and regional democracy slow down the process of war, making war less likely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although possible asymmetries for univariate and multivariate dynamics have been the focus of interest in many areas of economic explorations, it seems that most of the research on military expenditure - economic growth nexus has tended to assume linear relationships. This paper aims to examine possible nonlinearities in military expenditure-economic growth nexus employing data for a sample of 103 countries covering the 1988-2019 period. For this purpose, Panel Smooth Transition Regression, PSTR, models are estimated not only for all countries' sample but also for low income, middle income, and high-income countries' subsamples to reveal possible distinct asymmetric relationships for country groups with different income levels. Empirical results for the whole sample, low income and middle income groups indicate that military expenditure not only governs the regime change, but also low and high levels of military expenditure have distinctive and rising negative effects on economic growth with dissimilar threshold effects. Moreover, empirical findings also indicate that net arms exports govern regime change for high income countries, and as net arms exports rise, the negative impacts of military expenditure on economic growth become deeper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the long-term effects of civil war in former Yugoslavia on economic growth and development. To this end, we employ the synthetic control methodology, and estimate the missing counterfactual scenario for the long-run growth and development of former Yugoslav republics, in the absence of the civil war by matching their growth and development characteristics with non-Yugoslav countries at the similar stages of development. The results suggest that the civil war led to unprecedented long-run growth and development losses. In the absence of the war, per capita income levels of former Yugoslav republics would improve markedly with notable differences in the magnitude of the growth and development gains across the affected countries. The estimated effects of the civil war are robust to a large number of placebo checks, and falsification-based random permutation tests. The results show that not a single former Yugoslav republic down to the present day has achieved the level of per capita income predicted by their synthetic control groups in the years preceding the civil war. Our results show that the Yugoslav civil war appears to be a permanent institutional shock with long-lasting implications for economic growth and development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the large literature on military spending and growth, the heterogeneity of the categories of expenditure is seldom considered. Military spending is used to pay for a variety of things, including salaries, large weapon systems, and physical infrastructure, along with ongoing operations, training, and readiness - each of which might be expected to have different implications for economic growth. One reason for the focus on aggregate spending is the lack of disaggregated cross-country data, but there are some data available from NATO and the EU that break military spending into personnel, equipment, infrastructure and other expenditures (primarily operations and maintenance). This paper uses these data, available for 34 countries, for as many as 49 years, to investigate whether the composition of military budgets affects economic growth. Estimating standard growth models with this data it finds that as expected there is considerable heterogeneity in the effects of the different components. Specifically, the negative correlation between military spending and growth found in recent studies is primarily driven by personnel expenditures, and - slightly less clearly - by operating expenditures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies have investigated the relationship between political instability and economic growth separately from the relationship between military expenditure and economic growth. Besides, they did not cover the period after 2011 (i.e. the Arab Spring and its consequences). Therefore, this paper attempts to empirically analyze the long-run and short-run impacts of both political instability and military expenditure on economic growth in Egypt. We estimate the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach using data on the Egyptian economy over the period 1982–2018. For the robustness of our results, we use the fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS) estimator. Results of the ARDL approach indicate a significant negative relationship between political instability and economic growth in both the long-run and short-run. Contrarily, military expenditure has an insignificant impact on economic growth, especially in the long-run. These results are confirmed by the FMOLS estimator. Moreover, the estimated coefficient on the one-period lagged error correction term (ECTt-1) indicates that deviations from the long-run equilibrium relationship are corrected within a year. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan is a nation that has persisted through turbulent times. The country's leaders have long attempted to balance the allocation of resources between a strong military and a developing economy in their quest for stability, peace and prosperity. This paper examines and sheds further light on the relationship between Jordan's military expenditure and its economic growth during the period 1970–2015. Using the Gregory -Hansen cointegration technique allowing for structural breaks, and the ARDL methodology this paper tests the short – and long–run equilibrium relationship between military expenditure and economic growth in Jordan. Furthermore, with the error correction model (ECM) and the CUSUM and CUSUMSQ tests, we examine the stability of the above relationship. The results reveal positive short – and long–run relationships between military expenditure and economic growth in Jordan, during the period under study. This finding has important policy implications for the Jordanian state, as it justifies the transfer of resources to the military, showing that it has not had a negative impact on economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper employs a wavelet approach to investigate the relationship between economic growth and military spending in a time-frequency domain for the case of Turkey. Turkey presents an interesting case for analysis of military spending and economic growth, as its geopolitical position and history of insurgencies and separatist violence oblige the country to devote an unusually large share of the central government budget to national defence. Timescale regression analysis reveals that military expenditures have significant negative effects on growth in per capita GDP at business cycles of 16 years and longer. Timescale Granger causality analysis indicates that per capita GDP growth responds to movements in military expenditures at business cycles of eight years and above and that this result is very significant. Wavelet coherency analysis corroborates these findings, indicating a significant negative long-run co-movement at business cycles of 16 years and longer. Thus, the neoclassical prediction that military spending may promote growth does not hold in the case of Turkey, at least in the long run. Furthermore, the analysis reveals that, in the long run, military spending has been leading rather than lagging economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What factors at the individual and country levels influence public support for increased levels of military spending and related foreign policy preferences in NATO countries? Specifically, what individual-level characteristics (e.g., view of NATO) are associated with support for increasing military spending within the NATO alliance, and what country characteristics are associated with shifts in public opinion due to changes in the contextual environment within each country (e.g., military spending/economic growth)? Answers to these questions fill an important gap in the literature by investigating the domestic constraints that influence a country's response to questions of 'burden-sharing' and free riding within NATO. This study examines how citizens' preferences respond to their domestic political environment, and whether this behavior aligns with the 'guns versus butter' trade-off. Findings from a multilevel model combining country-level data with survey data from 13 NATO member countries between 2004–2012 suggest that individuals who view NATO as essential are consistently more likely to support increases in military spending, but changes in the contextual environment, such as high levels of military spending or high levels of economic growth, alter the preferences of individuals in a manner that follows what is known about the trade-offs citizens make between 'guns versus butter.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The cointegration and causal relationships amongst militarisation, energy consumption, carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and economic growth in Myanmar are investigated for the period of 1975–2014. Myanmar was governed by a military regime until 2011 with high levels of military expenditure. This study adopted an extended neoclassical production function framework utilising the autoregressive distributed lag approach to investigate the causal relationships. Estimation showed that a 1% increase in military expenditure led to a 0.63% decrease in GDP, whereas a 1% increase in energy consumption increased GDP by 4% in the long run. The bootstrap-corrected causality test located bidirectional causality between energy consumption and CO2 emissions and unidirectional causality running from economic growth to energy consumption. Policy recommendations promoting Myanmar's economic growth include reducing military spending which would contribute to a reduction in CO2 emissions and encourage efficient energy consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the causal nexus between defense expenditure and economic growth in China using the bootstrap Granger full-sample causality test and rolling-window estimation. The full-sample result indicates a positive bidirectional causality between economic growth and defense expenditure, suggesting that more defense spending increases economic growth, and vice versa. By adopting a time-varying rolling-window approach to revisit the dynamic causal relationships, this article identifies that the causality changes over time. We find significant positive short-run causality running from economic growth to defense expenditure in most of the time investigated, thus implying that economic growth stimulates defense expenditure. However, large-scale disarmaments break such positive linkage. Conversely, both positive and negative effects of defense expenditure on economic growth are demonstrated, showing that more defense spending has ambiguous effect on economy. Consequently, economic growth mainly drives defense expenditure rather than the other way around. The impact of defense expenditure in China on national economy is affected by multiplier effect and crowding-out effect as well as institutional factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to the analysis of the impact of military spending and corruption on economic growth, by considering not only the political dimension of corruption, distorting the allocation of resources to sectors, but also the impact on the efficiency of the bureaucratic environment. It does this by developing the model of Mauro (2004) in the context of an endogenous growth model to deal with corruption in the defence sector. It then uses data from the International Country Risk Guide to produce a novel measure of corruption that combines corruption within the political system, institutional strength, quality of bureaucracy and the degree of military participation in the country and estimates the model for a large panel of countries. The results suggest that both military spending (as a share of total government spending) and corruption have significant negative long run effects on output. As the model also suggests that multiple equilibria can exist, a comparison is made between high and low corruption groups of countries and clear differences are indeed found. This suggests that effort is needed to encourage and coerce high corruption and military spending countries, but low corruption and military spending countries are likely to need little attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]