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West Africa has been grappling with various security challenges prompting governments' intervention via military expenditure both at the country and regional level. Given the sporadic surge in military expenditure in the region and the potential effect such expenditure may exert on investment which is a sin qua non to the development process of any economy or region, this study utilizes the augmented mean group (AMG) approach and the Granger non-causality test in investigating the impact and causal relationship between investment and military expenditure in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) between 1980 and 2020. With country-specific cross-dependence and heterogeneity adequately accounted for, the study found that military expenditure has a dampening impact on investment at both the panel and country levels; unemployment adversely impacts investment; whereas economic growth stimulates investment (catalytic effect) in the ECOWAS, although at differing levels of significance. The study also established a long-run relationship among the variables; with only economic growth Granger causing investment. The study thus recommends that country-specific and regional-based military policies be established to glean economic growth through viable investment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how the New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) builds and deploys its capabilities in the evolving Indo-Pacific strategic environment. Geography, domestic politics, and historical moments shape defense policy and spending. The NZDF continues traditional deployments--peacekeeping, logistics, maritime security, and humanitarian operations--aiming to maintain an independent foreign policy while contributing modestly to the international order. The NZDF plays a critical role in humanitarian assistance and disaster response (HADR) in the Pacific and Southeast Asia, areas where New Zealand enjoys goodwill. However, despite improved troop quality, New Zealand's defense spending and personnel numbers have declined, eliminating its air combat capabilities. While HADR and other nontraditional roles grow, including search, rescue, and resource protection, the NZDF shifts away from its traditional role of border defense. Coupled with reluctance to formalize alliances beyond Australia, this approach in a riskier environment seems like a dangerous gamble. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: In pursuit of good governance and better allocation of resources, corruption and informal economy are of interest to policymakers and citizens alike. The impacts of military spending on the informal economy are scant. Moreover, the effects of an external factor, such as corruption that moderates this relationship, have largely been neglected in previous studies. Hence, this paper investigates how corruption moderates the effects of military spending on the informal economy in 30 Asian countries from 1995 to 2017. Design/methodology/approach: This paper utilizes the GMM estimation technique, which allows cross-sectional dependence and slope homogeneity in panel data analysis, to examine the moderating role of corruption on the relationship between military spending and the informal economy. Findings: Empirical findings from this paper indicate that an increase in military spending declines the informal economy while corruption increases it. Interestingly, the negative effects of military spending on the informal economy will mitigate with a greater degree of corruption in the Asian region. We also find that enhancing economic growth and attracting more FDI has reduced the informal economy in Asian countries. Originality/value: To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first empirical study conducted to examine the moderating role of corruption on the military spending – informal economy nexus. Thus far, this approach has not been investigated in the existing literature, particularly for Asian countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the evolving role of security as a key economic and political challenge, focusing on Germany's response to geopolitical instability, particularly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It argues that security is now a central economic factor, influencing investment and market stability. Based on data on defense spending and fiscal policy, the article highlights inadequate earlier efforts to rebuild defense capacity, with rising fiscal pressures. The paper emphasises the need for reforms in Germany's and Europe's security strategies to address hybrid threats and financial burdens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the challenges of the new security situation that Germany faces against the background of current geopolitical conflicts and the potential weakening of US security guarantees for Europe. The article counteracts the widespread idea that more money and more soldiers are necessary and automatically lead to an increase in military power. Instead, the article argue that the financial resources spent on the military sector need to be used more efficiently. The article discusses reform options that concern different fields, e.g. the organisation of military defence in Europe, the procurement of military equipment and the recruiting of soldiers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Democrats and Republicans have polarized in their attitudes (i.e., ideological polarization) and their feelings toward each other (i.e., affective polarization). Simultaneously, both groups also seem to diverge in their fatual beliefs about reality. The preregistered survey experiment among 2,253 American citizens examined how this factual belief polarization may or may not fuel ideological and affective polarization around four keys issues: income differences, immigration, climate change, and defense spending. On all issues except immigration, Democrats and Republicans were equally or more divided in their factual beliefs about the present than in their ideals for the future. Corrective information decreased partisan polarization over some ideals, but not directional policy attitudes. Priming respondent's factual beliefs conversely increased polarization around defense spending, but not other issues. Much remains unclear about the complex relation between factual beliefs and polarization, but measuring ideals and priming beliefs could be promising avenues for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some of the most notable human behavioral palimpsests result from warfare and its durable traces in the form of defensive architecture and strategic infrastructure. For premodern periods, this architecture is often understudied at the large scale, resulting in a lack of appreciation for the enormity of the costs and impacts of military spending over the course of human history. In this article, we compare the information gleaned from the study of the fortified cities of the Early Historic period of the Indian subcontinent (c. 3rd century BCE to 4th century CE) with the precolonial medieval era (9-17th centuries CE). Utilizing in-depth archaeological and historical studies along with local sightings and citizen-science blogs to create a comprehensive data set and map series in a "big-data" approach that makes use of heterogeneous data sets and presence-absence criteria, we discuss how the architecture of warfare shifted from an emphasis on urban defense in the Early Historic period to an emphasis on territorial offense and defense in the medieval period. Many medieval fortifications are known from only local reports and have minimal identifying information but can still be studied in the aggregate using a least-shared denominator approach to quantification and mapping. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Communicating and making sense of large numbers — millions, billions, and trillions — is a persistent struggle in our society. Using large numbers is a learning requirement for elementary school children, but even adults struggle with it. Hence supporting future teachers in developing their own understanding of the concepts is valuable. To construct, enact, and revise an educational experience for preservice teachers, we apply three frameworks of teaching mathematics for social justice tasks, high cognitive demand tasks, and productive mathematics discussion. The context uses United States educational and defense spending, the national budget, and the gross domestic product. Preservice teachers talk to family members outside of the classroom about large numbers. In class, they read arguments that compare educational and defense funding using the U.S. federal budget (defense receives much more federal funding) to educational and defense spending using the U.S. Gross Domestic Product (educational spending, at local, state, and national levels is much more than defense spending). Through action research, we implemented, revised, and adapted the task several times. We present the completed task and preservice teacher responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous investigations on the military spending-inequality nexus (in South Africa) were underpinned by the assumption that military spending and inequality behaves in symmetric fashion and employed linear autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model in their analysis. This paper extends and improves upon prior studies by investigating the short-run and long-run asymmetric effect of military spending on South Africa’s income inequality. Using annual data from 1980 to 2017 and the asymmetric autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) model by Shin et al. (2014), our paper revisits the military spending-income inequality nexus. We find evidence to suggest an asymmetric association between military and income inequality—income inequality responds differently to positive and negative shocks of military spending in the long- and short-run. Based on these findings, we conclude that the NARDL model delivers more accurate estimates and provides nuanced insights that the traditional linear ARDL.

AbstractThis research analyses and establishes linkages between the frequently disregarded economic theories that drive military spending. This paper’s analysis methodically goes over pertinent material, offering a thorough timeline that identifies significant moments that shaped the evolution of modern economic theories about military spending. Our analysis spans from the medieval period to the post-cold war times. Most of the analysis concentrates on conventional economic theories and their role in shaping military spending philosophies in Europe. We find that historical perspectives and theoretical underpinnings contribute to nuanced and informed debates, ensuring that the economic implications of defence investments are thoroughly understood. The ongoing discourse on military spending benefits from acknowledging the diverse roots and evolving theoretical perspectives, fostering a holistic understanding of the economic intricacies associated with defence expenditures, thus further emphasising the importance of this paper during such times.

The impact of military spending on economic growth can be different according to various factors such as the type of arms trade policy. Also, the discussions related to military spending and economic growth have provided different results. The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of military spending on economic growth through the channel of public debt. For this purpose, the indicators of different sectors of the economy and the methods of panel data and the FMOLS technique have been used. The study period is 2000-2022. The results of the study show that, in general, improvement in the indicators of military spending, corruption control and trade have a positive and significant effect on economic growth in the selected MENA countries, and in contrast to the effect of military spending on public debt channel, government size, Urbanization rate and inflation rate have a negative effect on economic growth in selected MENA countries. The variables of public debt and natural resources index and the number of military forces did not show a significant effect on economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The war between Russia and Ukraine which started on the 24th of February 2022, has heightened concerns about the implications of rising military expenditure on the spread of weapons and world security. Since the 9/11 attacks in the United States, studies have indicated that state military spending has increased, raising concerns among policymakers throughout the world. Therefore, the objective of this study is to investigate how an increase in military spending may affect both human security and the proliferation of weapons. Data for this study were gathered from secondary sources using a historical research approach, and content analysis was used for analysing the data. This study makes the case that increasing military spending has detrimental effects on human security in a variety of contexts, including the political, socio-psychological, and economic components of daily living. On the economic front, funds that could be utilised to raise citizen welfare are instead being spent to buy military hardware and software. In the political realm, it results in invasion and the funding of proxy wars, while on the social front, it has sparked hostility and concerns among nations. Lastly, this study recommended among other things that there is the need for collective efforts by member states of the United Nations through collective security to pressurised erring states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the financing of green energy initiatives as a critical element in strengthening Ukraine's energy security, especially in the context of post-war reconstruction and the need for sustainable and resilient energy infrastructure. The study aims to assess the potential and challenges of investing in green energy in Ukraine, considering the destruction caused by Russian military actions in the winter of 2022- 2023, and the need for recovery based on sustainable models. In this regard, the obtained results emphasize the importance of creating a reliable and decarbonized energy sector, driven by both domestic needs and international cooperation with the EU and other partners. The analysis shows that despite strong support for the green energy transition, the development of the sector is hindered by the high capital intensity required for green technologies, which are often not competitive without government subsidies. This requires a careful balance between innovation and commercial viability of green energy projects, highlighting the need for public and private investments in technologies that can compete with traditional sources of energy in the long term and developing new financing tools for Ukraine. The conclusions indicate that a multifaceted approach is needed to ensure Ukraine's energy future and minimize risks. Such an approach should include policy reforms, strategic investments in proven green technologies, and fostering partnerships to bridge the commercialization gap. Policymakers face the dual challenge of accelerating the energy transition while managing financial constraints exacerbated by military spending, highlighting the trade-off between rapid development and the risks associated with financing innovation. Overall, this study contributes to the understanding of how green energy financing mechanisms can enhance Ukraine's energy security, suggesting broader implications for policy, investment, and technological innovation in the context of Ukraine's post-war recovery and future resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does "shaming" work in NATO? More precisely, does publicly using negative language criticizing allies' defense spending improve burden-sharing, or is it counterproductive, leading to lower spending? We evaluate the effectiveness of public shaming language; specifically, whether it increases allies' defense spending or whether other considerations like external threat, domestic budgets, economic growth, or unemployment rates are better predictors of contributions. Using an original dataset of presidential statements and NATO defense spending data disaggregated across the four categories tracked by the alliance, we conclude that negative language toward allies' spending is at best ineffective and may even adversely affect burden-sharing in the long run. These findings have important implications for the political economy of alliances and both theories and policies on the use of rhetorical pressure to elicit compliance in asymmetric power relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research delves into Lithuania's response to the perceived threat from Russia and the practical implementation of its total defence approach. Key political figures, including the President, Prime Minister, Minister of National Defence, and Chairman of the National Security and Defence Committee, are scrutinized using securitization theory. The study explores how these actors frame total defence as an urgent response to an existential threat and analyses both their discourse and tangible actions from 2020 onwards. Distinct approaches among political figures emerge, with the President prioritizing communication, the Minister of Defence emphasizing tangible improvements, and the Chairman of the NSDC acting as a driving force. Despite increased military spending, the involvement of society in national defence—integral to the total defence strategy—remains limited. Factors contributing to this limitation include unclear leadership, insincere rhetoric, bureaucratic obstacles, and the initial unpreparedness of the Armed Forces to integrate civilians. The study underscores the critical need for genuine commitment and leadership to achieve meaningful breakthroughs in Lithuania's total defence approach. While politicians employ securitization and public discourse to align with public sentiment and present themselves as problem solvers, the actual progress in engaging the public and the private sector remains limited. The discrepancy between discourse and material implementation suggests that a more substantial commitment is essential for effective societal involvement in national defence, making it clear that symbolic gestures fall short of achieving impactful results in Lithuania's total defence approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper highlights the need to fight corruption in developing economies to ensure a better allocation of public resources in a context of institutional failure with the discretionary power of budgetary authorities. The study uses a panel of 48 Sub-Saharan African countries by combining several databases (WDI, WGI, SPEED BASE DATA and PWT), estimate by generalized moment method in system, the bias-corrected estimation linear dynamic panel data [6] and the type of error correction (Driscoll–Kraay). The results indicate that the phenomenon of corruption in the form of rent capture has two effects on public resources. One effect is linked to the level of public spending and the other to the distribution of public resources. Thus, corruption leads to an increase in the overall level of public spending. Corruption reduces spending on education, mining and communications, but increases spending on the military, health and transport. The study recommends that political leaders in developing countries strengthen and rigorously enforce anti-corruption laws, and raise public awareness of the underground economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista de Indias is the property of Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Previous investigations on the military spending-inequality nexus (in South Africa) were underpinned by the assumption that military spending and inequality behaves in symmetric fashion and employed linear autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model in their analysis. This paper extends and improves upon prior studies by investigating the short-run and long-run asymmetric effect of military spending on South Africa's income inequality. Using annual data from 1980 to 2017 and the asymmetric autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) model by Shin et al. (2014), our paper revisits the military spending-income inequality nexus. We find evidence to suggest an asymmetric association between military and income inequality—income inequality responds differently to positive and negative shocks of military spending in the long- and short-run. Based on these findings, we conclude that the NARDL model delivers more accurate estimates and provides nuanced insights that the traditional linear ARDL. Impact statement: Our study examines the relationship between military spending and income inequality, revealing an asymmetric dynamic. These findings suggest that the Nonlinear ARDL (NARDL) model offers more precise estimates and deeper insights compared to the conventional linear ARDL approach. The significance of this study is that income inequality reacts differently to increases and decreases in military spending, both in the short and long term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In March 2024 the Minister of National Defence characterised the Canadian Armed Forces' (CAF) inability to attract new members as a "death spiral" for the force. While the latest defence policy update, Our North, Strong and Free: A Renewed Vision for Canada's Defence, recognises the seriousness of the CAF's personnel crisis, it provides no concrete actions to solve it. However, this defence policy update is just the latest in a series of actions used by the CAF to manage perceptions of its personnel problems rather than addressing their root causes. This article examines the latest defence policy in the historical context of other DND policy statements and the air force's current and historical experience to see what lessons from its past might be applied in devising solutions to the CAF's current personnel crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Conjuntura Austral is the property of Conjuntura Austral and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Humania del Sur: Revista de Estudios Latinoamericanos, Africanos y Asiáticos is the property of Humania del Sur. Estudios Latinoamericanos Africanos y Asiaticos and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Humania del Sur: Revista de Estudios Latinoamericanos, Africanos y Asiáticos is the property of Humania del Sur. Estudios Latinoamericanos Africanos y Asiaticos and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In the 21st century, defense financing is a significant challenge in the context of evolving security threats and budgetary constraints. In the context of modern warfare, nations have certain commitments to allocate as much financial and substantial resources as possible to maintain robust defense capabilities. In the first part, I will highlight the conflicts that have succeeded in convincing individual states, both the NATO alliance and globally, to invest some of their financial resources in defense. In the second part, I will briefly outline the ways in which a state can fund its defense budget even though there are economic constraints, technology tends to evolve, but also the geopolitical sphere is constantly changing. In the third part, I will highlight the principle on which the Euro-Atlantic alliance should be based, the principle of the "3E", and I will represent the spending that has taken place within the NATO alliance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the military outlays effects on human capital development in sub-Saharan Africa. By using panel data covering 44 countries from 1995 to 2020, a system Generalized Method of Moments is adopted as the estimation technique of a dynamic panel model. Findings show that military outlays have a significant positive effect on education spending in sub-Saharan Africa. However, the sensitivity analysis reports a mitigated result, highlighting the diversity of evidence on the 'guns better than butter' literature. While military outlays positively affect education expenditures in central and southern African sub-regions, they crowd-out the public spending allocated to education development in Sahel & Lake Chad area, western and eastern sub-regions. These results, therefore, suggest that policy makers should promote the approach which considers defense as a component of socioeconomic development by regulating the perfect ratio of military spending that meets their needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Degrowth advocates argue for structural transformations in how economies and societies prioritize material wealth accumulation to reduce the negative effects of future anthropogenic climate change. Degrowth proponents argue that human economic activity could be lessened, and societies transformed to prioritize improved wellbeing, reducing the threat of climate change. This paper explores implications of alternative patterns of economic growth with transformational policy pathways (i.e., redistribution) to assess what effects economic growth and broader policies have on changing patterns of human development across both the Global North and South. Using the International Futures model, this article shows that negative growth and societal transformations in the Global North are possible without dramatically damaging long-term global socioeconomic development, though these interventions do not solve the global climate crisis, reducing future cumulative carbon emissions by 10.5% through 2100. On the other hand, a global negative growth scenario will significantly reduce future cumulative carbon emissions (45%) but also dramatically undermines the pursuit of global development goals, like the elimination of poverty. Even with global policies that significantly increase cash transfers to the poor and retired, dramatically improve income inequality, and eliminate military spending, the Global Negative Growth Big Push scenario leads to an increase of 15 percentage points in global extreme poverty by 2100. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The world's so-called rich countries have still been spending a huge sum of their budgets on military heads, in spite of there being no such fears of multilateral formal wars. Further, there is no such strong evidence that military expenditures are capable of raising the GDPs of the concerned countries. The countries, as a result, have been squeezing allotments in their budgets upon real asset building spending such as on the social sectors and natural resource development. There is thus a trade-off between military spending and real asset building. The present study examines the long-run relationships with causal interplays between military spending and green capital and also identifies the crowds-in or crowds-out effects of military spending on green capital in the top 20 military power-owning countries for the period 1991–2020. The results show the existence of long-run relations between the two in the majority of the countries and military spending makes a cause to green capital in the long run. But, for a few countries, the study observes causal interplay between military heads and green capital heads. Finally, the study finds that the militarization practices crowd out the green capital formation in eight countries and the opposite outcome, the crowding-in effects, works in twelve countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Terrorism has become an alarming issue in Africa due to its potential negative impact on the economy. The escalation of terrorist activities in the region has the capacity to discourage tourists from visiting Africa. This has led to the government increasing military expenditure for counterterrorism with the objective of combating the adverse effects of terrorism on the tourism industry and other sectors of the economy. The purpose of this research is to explore the effectiveness of military spending in offsetting the negative impact of terrorism on tourism in Africa. The study utilized data from 24 African countries between 2001 and 2018 and employed Prais-Winsten regression and Driscoll and Kraay-type Fixed Effects models. Both estimation strategies account for cross-sectional dependence, serial correlation, and heteroskedasticity. The Fixed effect model also accounts for unobserved heterogeneity, which can cause estimation bias when not accounted for. The study also utilizes the first lag of the explanatory variables as instruments for the endogenous variables in the Fixed Effects model to cushion the effect of simultaneity or reverse causality in the modeling. The findings show that both the number of terrorist incidents and the number of terrorist fatalities have negative effects on the number of tourist arrivals into Africa in the absence of military expenditure and when unobservable heterogeneity is considered. Further findings reveal that military expenditure is effective in offsetting the negative impact of the fatalities that arise from terrorism on the number of tourist arrivals in Africa, as revealed by both the interactive and net effects. Additionally, the analysis is expanded using disaggregated tourist data, and the results show that European tourists are more responsive to the use of military expenditure in offsetting the negative impact of terrorism than tourists from America, East Asia, and the Pacific. The policy implication of this study is that African countries must increase military expenditure if they are to effectively offset the negative effect of terrorism on the tourism industry. However, it is also crucial that essential expenditures on education and health are not foregone due to their long run influence on economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are contradicting views regarding the casual nexus between a country's military spending and its nation's income inequality. Military spending is a critical component of government budget and can simply crowd out transfer payments, needed to improve income inequality. However, these payments can also stimulate a demand that can enhance the income prospects of the low-income earners. So, the association between military spending and income inequality is a vital question. The aim of this study is to examine the relationship between military spending and income inequality for BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa). We used panel data extracted from different sources such as World Bank's World Development Indicators and Penn World Tables. This is the first study that disaggregate the data and compute the results for the full sample (all BRICS countries taken together) and for sub-samples for countries with military expenditure of about 2% of GDP (India, china and Russia) and countries with military expenditure of less than 1% of GDP (that is, South Africa and Brazil). Thus, to unravel the influence of military spending on income inequality, pool mean group (PMG) or panel autoregressive distributed lag (PARDL) approach was applied for the period from 1990-2017 for BRICS nations. Overall, the empirical result for the pooled sample established an inverse relationship between military expenditure and income inequality. A percentage change in military expenditure result in income inequality reduction within the BRICS community. The estimated coefficient of GDP per capita, show that a percentage increase in GDP per capita in the long run will lead to about -0.209756 reduction in the level of income inequality and statistically significant at 1% level. When data was disaggregated to reflect the BRICS countries whose military expenditure was about 2% of the national budget (i.e. Russia, China and India), the study found that military expenditure had a negative influence on income inequality in the long run equation. Based on the outcome of this empirical work, we recommend for policy makers should focus more on the policies which can improve economic activities within the BRICS nations and ultimately reduce income inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]