IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/defpea/v13y2002i5p353-363.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Development and conflict in the Balkans: Catch-up and military expenditure

Author

Listed:
  • Carlos Barros

Abstract

This paper analyses the convergence between countries in relation to the catch-up hypothesis concerning the level of total productivity. The catch-up hypothesis claims that poor countries tend to grow faster than rich countries through the international diffusion of knowledge and technology. We test this hypothesis for the Balkan countries and investigate the effect of military expenditure in the region on productivity growth. The aim is to investigate empirically whether productivity growth has been greater in countries with lower military expenditure, in line with theory. The results obtained show that, overall, improvements in technological change co-exist with deteriorating technical efficiency change and that there is a negative correlation between military expenditure and either total productivity growth and technological change, and a positive, but statistically insignificant, relationship with technical efficiency change. We conclude that economic growth is the key to regional development and that too great a diversion of resources to military commitments can lead to overstretch.

Suggested Citation

  • Carlos Barros, 2002. "Development and conflict in the Balkans: Catch-up and military expenditure," Defence and Peace Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 13(5), pages 353-363.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:defpea:v:13:y:2002:i:5:p:353-363
    DOI: 10.1080/10242690213510
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10242690213510
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/10242690213510?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Charnes, A. & Cooper, W. W. & Rhodes, E., 1978. "Measuring the efficiency of decision making units," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 2(6), pages 429-444, November.
    2. Taskin, Fatma & Zaim, Osman, 1997. "Catching-up and innovation in high- and low-income countries," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 54(1), pages 93-100, January.
    3. Christos Kollias & Stelios Makrydakis, 1997. "Is there a Greek-Turkish arms race?: Evidence from cointegration and causality tests," Defence and Peace Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 8(4), pages 355-379.
    4. Joerding, Wayne, 1986. "Economic growth and defense spending : Granger Causality," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 35-40, April.
    5. Oumar Nabe, 1983. "Military Expenditures and Industrialization in Africa," Journal of Economic Issues, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 17(2), pages 575-587, June.
    6. Caves, Douglas W & Christensen, Laurits R & Diewert, W Erwin, 1982. "The Economic Theory of Index Numbers and the Measurement of Input, Output, and Productivity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(6), pages 1393-1414, November.
    7. Benoit, Emile, 1978. "Growth and Defense in Developing Countries," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 26(2), pages 271-280, January.
    8. Joaquin Maudos & Jose Manuel Pastor & Lorenzo Serrano, 2000. "Convergence in OECD countries: technical change, efficiency and productivity," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 32(6), pages 757-765.
    9. Saadet Deger & Ron Smith, 1983. "Military Expenditure and Growth in Less Developed Countries," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 27(2), pages 335-353, June.
    10. Robert J. Barro & Xavier Sala-i-Martin, 1991. "Convergence across States and Regions," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 22(1), pages 107-182.
    11. Fare, Rolf & Grosskopf, Shawna & Yaisawarng, Suthathip & Li, Sung Ko & Wang, Zhaoping, 1990. "Productivity growth in Illinois electric utilities," Resources and Energy, Elsevier, vol. 12(4), pages 383-398, December.
    12. Deger, Saadet, 1986. "Economic Development and Defense Expenditure," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 35(1), pages 179-196, October.
    13. repec:bla:scandj:v:94:y:1992:i:0:p:s193-205 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Faini, Riccardo & Annez, Patricia & Taylor, Lance, 1984. "Defense Spending, Economic Structure, and Growth: Evidence among Countries and Over Time," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 32(3), pages 487-498, April.
    15. Sandler,Todd & Hartley,Keith, 1995. "The Economics of Defense," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521447287, January.
    16. Smith, R P, 1977. "Military Expenditure and Capitalism," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 1(1), pages 61-76, March.
    17. Lim, David, 1983. "Another Look at Growth and Defense in Less Developed Countries," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 31(2), pages 377-384, January.
    18. Barro, Robert J & Sala-i-Martin, Xavier, 1992. "Convergence," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(2), pages 223-251, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Juan Prieto‐Rodr�guez & Juan G. Rodr�guez, 2011. "Social Preferences For National Defence And Police Enforcement In Western Europe," Defence and Peace Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 22(4), pages 409-421, July.
    2. Christos Kollias & Suzanna-Maria Paleologou, 2011. "The Macroeconomic Effects of Conflict: Three Case Studies," Chapters, in: Derek L. Braddon & Keith Hartley (ed.), Handbook on the Economics of Conflict, chapter 14, Edward Elgar Publishing.

    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. 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.
    2. Alptekin, Aynur & Levine, Paul, 2012. "Military expenditure and economic growth: A meta-analysis," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 636-650.
    3. Muhammad Shahbaz & Talat Afza & Muhammad Shahbaz Shabbir, 2013. "Does Defence Spending Impede Economic Growth? Cointegration And Causality Analysis For Pakistan," Defence and Peace Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 24(2), pages 105-120, April.
    4. Eduardo Morales-Ramos, 2002. "Defence R&D expenditure: The crowding-out hypothesis," Defence and Peace Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 13(5), pages 365-383.
    5. 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.
    6. Abdur R. Chowdhury, 1991. "A Causal Analysis of Defense Spending and Economic Growth," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 35(1), pages 80-97, March.
    7. Albert Wijeweera & Matthew J. Webb, 2012. "Using the Feder-Ram and Military Keynesian Models to Examine the Link Between Defence Spending and Economic Growth in Sri Lanka," Defence and Peace Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(3), pages 303-311, May.
    8. Joaquin Maudos & Jose Pastor & Lorenzo Serrano, 2000. "Efficiency and Productive Specialization: An Application to the Spanish Regions," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(9), pages 829-842.
    9. repec:ipg:wpaper:2014-380 is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Sefa Awaworyi Churchill & Siew Ling Yew, 2018. "The effect of military expenditure on growth: an empirical synthesis," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 55(3), pages 1357-1387, November.
    11. Shieh, Jhy-yuan & Lai, Ching-chong & Chang, Wen-ya, 2002. "The impact of military burden on long-run growth and welfare," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(2), pages 443-454, August.
    12. Mie Augier & Robert McNab & Jerry Guo & Phillip Karber, 2017. "Defense spending and economic growth: evidence from China, 1952–2012," Defence and Peace Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 28(1), pages 65-90, January.
    13. Isard Walter & Anderton Charles H., 1999. "Survey of the Peace Economics Literature: Recent Key Contributions and a Comprehensive Coverage Up to 1992 (Part II)," Peace Economics, Peace Science, and Public Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 5(4), pages 1-55, October.
    14. Nusrate Aziz & M. Niaz Asadullah, 2017. "Military spending, armed conflict and economic growth in developing countries in the post-Cold War era," Journal of Economic Studies, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 44(1), pages 47-68, January.
    15. Mona Rabea Abd Elfattah Elsayed, 2024. "Guns versus Growth: Assessing the Validity of the Benoit Hypothesis on the Egyptian Economy," International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, Econjournals, vol. 14(5), pages 71-80, September.
    16. Paula Gómez-Trueba Santamaría & Alfredo Arahuetes García & Tomás Curto González, 2021. "A tale of five stories: Defence spending and economic growth in NATO´s countries," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(1), pages 1-22, January.
    17. Chang, Hsin-Chen & Huang, Bwo-Nung & Yang, Chin Wei, 2011. "Military expenditure and economic growth across different groups: A dynamic panel Granger-causality approach," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 28(6), pages 2416-2423.
    18. Leone Leonida & Carmelo Petraglia & Luis Murillo-Zamorano, 2004. "Total factor productivity and the convergence hypothesis in the Italian regions," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 36(19), pages 2187-2193.
    19. Carlos Pestana Barros, 2002. "Small countries and the consolidation of the European defence industry: Portugal as a case study," Defence and Peace Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 13(4), pages 311-319.
    20. Garfinkel, Michelle R. & Skaperdas, Stergios (ed.), 2012. "The Oxford Handbook of the Economics of Peace and Conflict," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780195392777.
    21. Mohsen Bahmani-Oskooee & Gour Goswami, 2006. "Military spending and the black market premium in developing countries," Review of Social Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 64(1), pages 77-91.

    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:taf:defpea:v:13:y:2002:i:5:p:353-363. 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: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/GDPE20 .

    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.