Meta-analysis, military expenditures and growth
| DOI | 10.1177/0022343318808841 |
| Author | M Ensar Yesilyurt,Filiz Yesilyurt |
| Published date | 01 May 2019 |
| Date | 01 May 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Regular Articles |
Meta-analysis, military expenditures
and growth
Filiz Yesilyurt & M Ensar Yesilyurt
Department of Economics, Pamukkale University
Abstract
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.
Keywords
growth, meta-analysis, military expenditure, robust tests
Introduction
There is a vast quantitative empirical literature which
attempts to measure the effect of military expenditure
on growth, dating back at least to Benoit (1973). The
issue is controversial with some, like Benoit, arguing that
military expenditure increases growth by, for instance,
stimulating demand and generating technological spin-
off, while others argue that it reduces growth by diverting
resources from productive uses like investment in phys-
ical and human capital. There is also an ideological
dimension, reflecting different attitudes to military
spending. While there are a large number of qualitative
surveys of this literature, including the recent ‘evidence
synthesis’ of Dunne & Tian (2013), and earlier surveys
by Deger & Sen (1995) and Ram (1995), there is only
one quantitative meta-analysis of the effect of military
expenditure on growth, that by Alptekin & Levine
(2012), hereafter AL. In this article we conduct a
meta-analysis of the effect of military expenditure on
growth using similar procedures to AL but a much larger
sample, of 554 estimates from 91 studies as against AL’s
169 estimates from 32 studies. The studies come from a
very wide variety of disciplines and journals, including
13 from the Journal of Peace Research.
We were able to assemble this much larger sample
partly by the standard route of searching databases, bib-
liographies, library catalogues and literature surveys and
partly by establishing an online database at Literature
matic.com, which contained references and descriptions
of articles on military expenditure and growth. This
database was publicized through an article in Defence and
Peace Economics (Yesilyurt & Yesilyurt, 2014) which
prompted many authors to suggest additional articles,
Corresponding author:
meyyurt@pau.edu.tr
Journal of Peace Research
2019, Vol. 56(3) 352–363
ªThe Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/0022343318808841
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