IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/jocore/v56y2012i3p413-438.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Who Pays for National Defense? Financing Defense Programs in the United States, 1947–2007

Author

Listed:
  • Uk Heo
  • John Bohte

Abstract

Past studies on military expenditures in the United States have primarily focused on the extent to which guns versus butter trade-offs are prevalent without examining this relationship in the context of how other fiscal policy tools are used to pay for defense. Using annual data from 1947–2007, this study examines the relative importance of defense financing policy measures, such as guns versus butter trade-offs, tax increases, and deficit spending in paying for defense. The results show evidence of guns versus butter trade-off during the Reagan Era, but not during other periods. Both federal tax policy and deficit spending have played influential roles in funding defense spending during peacetime. This modeling strategy points to the importance of analyzing the effects of multiple fiscal policy tools when studying the forces that drive military spending in the United States since World War II.

Suggested Citation

  • Uk Heo & John Bohte, 2012. "Who Pays for National Defense? Financing Defense Programs in the United States, 1947–2007," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 56(3), pages 413-438, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:jocore:v:56:y:2012:i:3:p:413-438
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://jcr.sagepub.com/content/56/3/413.abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Barro, Robert J & Sahasakul, Chaipat, 1986. "Average Marginal Tax Rates from Social Security and the Individual Income Tax," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 59(4), pages 555-566, October.
    2. King, Robert G & Rebelo, Sergio, 1990. "Public Policy and Economic Growth: Developing Neoclassical Implications," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(5), pages 126-150, October.
    3. Russett, Bruce M., 1969. "Who Pays for Defense? 1," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 63(2), pages 412-426, June.
    4. Jeffrey Smith & M. H. Tuttle, 2008. "Does Defense Spending Really Promote Aggregate Output In The United States?," Defence and Peace Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(6), pages 435-447.
    5. Mintz, Alex, 1989. "Guns Versus Butter: A Disaggregated Analysis," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 83(4), pages 1285-1293, December.
    6. Michael Gerace, 2002. "US Military Expenditures and Economic Growth: Some Evidence from Spectral Methods," Defence and Peace Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 13(1), pages 1-11.
    7. Quinn, Dennis P. & Shapiro, Robert Y., 1991. "Business Political Power: The Case of Taxation," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 85(3), pages 851-874, September.
    8. Ostrom, Charles W. & Simon, Dennis M., 1985. "Promise and Performance: A Dynamic Model of Presidential Popularity," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 79(2), pages 334-358, June.
    9. Kamlet, Mark S. & Mowery, David C., 1987. "Influences on Executive and Congressional Budgetary Priorities, 1955–1981," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 81(1), pages 155-178, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Hakkio, Craig S. & Rush, Mark & Schmidt, Timothy J., 1996. "The marginal income tax rate schedule from 1930 to 1990," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(1), pages 117-138, August.
    2. repec:ipg:wpaper:2014-380 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Patrick K. Asea & Enrique G. Mendoza & Gian Maria Milesi-Ferreti, 1995. "Do taxes matter for long-run growth?: Harberger's superneutrality conjecture," International Finance Discussion Papers 511, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    4. Rabia Aslam, 2007. "Measuring The Peace Dividend: Evidence From Developing Economies," Defence and Peace Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 18(1), pages 39-52.
    5. Eric S. Lin & Hamid E. Ali & Yu-Lung Lu, 2015. "Does Military Spending Crowd Out Social Welfare Expenditures? Evidence from a Panel of OECD Countries," Defence and Peace Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 26(1), pages 33-48, February.
    6. Ying Zhang & Xiaoxing Liu & Rui Wang & Ruobing Tang, 2016. "Revisiting the “Guns versus Butter” Argument in China (1950–2014): New Evidence from the Continuous Wavelet Analysis," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 8(7), pages 1-13, July.
    7. Shahbaz, Muhammad & Leitão, Nuno Carlos & Uddin, Gazi Salah & Arouri, Mohamed & Teulon, Frédéric, 2013. "Should Portuguese economy invest in defense spending? A revisit," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 805-815.
    8. Ying Zhang & Xiaoxing Liu & Jiaxin Xu & Rui Wang, 2017. "Does military spending promote social welfare? A comparative analysis of the BRICS and G7 countries," Defence and Peace Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 28(6), pages 686-702, November.
    9. ColemanII, Wilbur John, 2000. "Welfare and optimum dynamic taxation of consumption and income," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(1), pages 1-39, April.
    10. Arin, K. Peren & Berlemann, Michael & Koray, Faik & Kuhlenkasper, Torben, 2011. "The taxation-growth-nexus revisited," HWWI Research Papers 104, Hamburg Institute of International Economics (HWWI).
    11. Serhan Cevik & John Ricco, 2018. "No buck for the bang: revisiting the military-growth nexus," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 45(4), pages 639-653, November.
    12. Guo Ping & Alotaish Mohammed Saud M., 2017. "Revisiting the Causal Nexus between Defense Expenditure and Economic Growth: Time Series Analysis for Saudi Arabia," Asian Journal of Economic Modelling, Asian Economic and Social Society, vol. 5(1), pages 35-43, March.
    13. Innocent.U. Duru & Millicent Adanne Eze & Bartholomew.O.N. Okafor & Abubakar Yusuf & Lawrence.O. Ede & Abubakar Sadiq Saleh, 2021. "Military Outlay and Economic Growth: The Scenarios of Lake Chad Basin Countries of the Republic of Chad and Nigeria," Growth, Asian Online Journal Publishing Group, vol. 8(1), pages 12-26.
    14. Kyriakos Emmanouilidis, 2024. "Military Spending and Economic Output: A Decomposition Analysis of the US Military Budget," Defence and Peace Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 35(2), pages 243-263, February.
    15. Mendoza, Enrique G. & Milesi-Ferretti, Gian Maria & Asea, Patrick, 1997. "On the ineffectiveness of tax policy in altering long-run growth: Harberger's superneutrality conjecture," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(1), pages 99-126, October.
    16. Chiung-Ju Huang & Yuan-Hong Ho, 2018. "Does Taiwan's Defense Spending Crowd out Education and Social Welfare Expenditures?," Journal of Economics and Management, College of Business, Feng Chia University, Taiwan, vol. 14(1), pages 67-82, February.
    17. Ali Hamid E., 2011. "Military Expenditures and Human Development: Guns and Butter Arguments Revisited: A Case Study from Egypt," Peace Economics, Peace Science, and Public Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 17(1), pages 1-21, September.
    18. Wen, Jean-Francois & Love, David R. F., 1998. "Evaluating Tax Reforms in a Monetary Economy," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 20(3), pages 487-508, July.
    19. Vasilev, Aleksandar, 2015. "Welfare gains from the adoption of proportional taxation in a general-equilibrium model with a grey economy: the case of Bulgaria's 2008 flat tax reform," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 48(2), pages 169-185.
    20. Iamsiraroj, Sasi, 2016. "The foreign direct investment–economic growth nexus," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 116-133.
    21. van de Klundert, T.C.M.J. & Smulders, J.A., 1991. "Reconstructing growth theory : A survey," Other publications TiSEM 19355c51-17eb-4d5d-aa66-b, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:jocore:v:56:y:2012:i:3:p:413-438. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://pss.la.psu.edu/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.