Guns and butter? Military expenditure and health spending on the eve of the Arab Spring
Accepted version
Peer-reviewed
Repository URI
Repository DOI
Change log
Authors
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
1476-8267
Volume Title
30
Publisher
Taylor & Francis
Publisher DOI
Sponsorship
Economic and Social Research Council (ES/P010962/1)