Institutional Determinants of Military Spending

Germà Bel and Ferran Elias ()

No 200922, IREA Working Papers from University of Barcelona, Research Institute of Applied Economics

Abstract: Drawing on a database for 1988-2006 containing information on 157 countries, we investigate the effects on military spending of government form, electoral rules, concentration of parliamentary parties, and ideology. From an OLS regression on pooled data, our results show that presidential democracies spend more than parliamentary systems on defense, whereas the presence of a plurality voting system will reduce the defense burden. Our findings suggest that, in contrast to theoretical predictions in the literature, institutions do not have the same impact on the provision of all public goods. We present as well evidence regarding the effect of ideology on defense spending.

Keywords: Military Spending; Politics; Institutions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 pages
Date: 2009-10, Revised 2009-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pbe and nep-pol
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

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Journal Article: Institutional determinants of military spending (2012)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ira:wpaper:200922

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