DEFENSE SPENDING AND ECONOMIC GROWTH IN A NONLINEAR CONTEXT: THE CASE OF FRANCE

The aim of this article is to propose further empirical evidence on the defense spending - economic growth relationship in the case of France. Given the complexity of this nexus, we use a nonlinear model, which is original for the case of France. The results are the following: (i) a nonlinear approach is better compared to a linear approach ; (ii) the transition variable is the lagged growth rate ; (iii) the asymmetric behaviour of defense burden is highlighted depending to the growth regime : in the cases of low growth and high growth, the effect is negative but turns to be positive for intermediate growth rates.