The nexus between defense expenditure and economic growth: New global evidence

This paper applies a two-step Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) to re-examine the causality between defense burden (MB) and real GDP (RY) for 137 countries. The findings indicate that a short-run causality running from MB to RY is found in lower-middle- and high-income countries and that from RY to MB is found in low-income countries, while bidirectional short-run causality is found in Asia, Europe, Latin America & the Caribbean and the Middle East & North Africa. No causality is found in upper-middle-income, European & Central Asian and Sub-Saharan African countries. Thus, our results do not support that one size fits all. This paper contributes important implications to the countries for making their defense policy. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.