Scientometric Analysis of the Relationship between Expenditure on Defence and Economic Growth: Current Situation and Future Perspectives

This article aims to identify the main studies that research the relationship between defence spending and economic growth in a region, carried out on a large sample of 162 articles obtained from the Web of Science database, published between 1995 and 2019. By carrying out three analyses, descriptive, scientometric and content, the results have made it possible to identify the most outstanding characteristics of this relationship along with the main schools of thought. Furthermore, these can be grouped into one of the four proposed categories: positive relationship, negative, bidirectional or no relation at all. The state of the art has been evaluated and synthesized, establishing trends and areas for future research in this broad field.