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Guns and butter? Military expenditure and health spending on the eve of the Arab Spring

Accepted version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Article

Change log

Authors

Daoud, A 
Fakih, A 
Marrouch, W 
Reinsberg, B 

Abstract

We examine the validity of the guns-versus-butter hypothesis in the pre-Arab Spring era. Using panel data from 1995 to 2011–the eve of the Arab uprisings–we find no evidence that increased security needs as measured by the number of domestic terrorist attacks are complemented by increased military spending or more importantly ‘crowd out’ government expenditure on key public goods such as health care. This suggests that both expenditure decisions were determined by other considerations at the government level.

Description

Keywords

Military spending, public goods, expenditure trade-off, Middle East and North Africa (MENA)

Journal Title

Defence and Peace Economics

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

1024-2694
1476-8267

Volume Title

30

Publisher

Taylor & Francis
Sponsorship
Economic and Social Research Council (ES/P010962/1)