IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/3025.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

How Elastic is the Government's Demand for Weapons?

Author

Listed:
  • Frank R. Lichtenberg

Abstract

We attempt to make inferences about the elasticity of the government's demand for specific weapons by analyzing the statistical relationship between quantity and cost revisions across the population of major weapon systems, using data contained in the Pentagon's Selected Acquisition Reports. The cost revisions are due in part to the arrival of technological information generated in the course of research and development. When we standardize the data by program base year, we find that the elasticity of demand is .55, and is significantly different from both zero and unity. Thus, the governments demand for specific weapons is inelastic, but not perfectly inelastic. The estimates also imply that weapons acquisition is characterized by increasing returns: the mean and median values of the elasticity of total cost with respect to quantity are .78 and .72, respectively.

Suggested Citation

  • Frank R. Lichtenberg, 1989. "How Elastic is the Government's Demand for Weapons?," NBER Working Papers 3025, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:3025
    Note: PR
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w3025.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lichtenberg, Frank R, 1988. "The Private R&D Investment Response to Federal Design and Technical Competitions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 78(3), pages 550-559, June.
    2. A W. Marshall & W H. Meckling, 1962. "Predictability of the Costs, Time, and Success of Development," NBER Chapters, in: The Rate and Direction of Inventive Activity: Economic and Social Factors, pages 461-476, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. White, Halbert, 1980. "A Heteroskedasticity-Consistent Covariance Matrix Estimator and a Direct Test for Heteroskedasticity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 48(4), pages 817-838, May.
    4. Tirole, Jean, 1986. "Procurement and Renegotiation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 94(2), pages 235-259, April.
    5. repec:bla:scandj:v:90:y:1988:i:3:p:329-56 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. William P. Rogerson, 1988. "Profit Regulation of Defense Contractors and Prizes for Innovation : Theory and Evidence," Discussion Papers 759, Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science.
    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. Susan J. Guthrie & Hines, James R. Jr., 2011. "U.S. DEFENSE CONTRACTS DURING the TAX EXPENDITURE BATTLES of the 1980s," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 64(2), pages 731-751, June.
    2. Luechinger, Simon & Moser, Christoph, 2014. "The value of the revolving door: Political appointees and the stock market," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 93-107.
    3. Yongmin Chen & Ron Smith, 2001. "Equilibrium Cost Overruns," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 2(2), pages 401-414, November.

    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. Rodrigo M. S. Moita & Claudio Paiva, 2013. "Political Price Cycles in Regulated Industries: Theory and Evidence," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 5(1), pages 94-121, February.
    2. Guth, Werner & Muller, Wieland & Spiegel, Yossi, 2006. "Noisy leadership: An experimental approach," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 57(1), pages 37-62, October.
    3. Leonardo A. Rocha & Denis Vieira Sarmento & Carlos Alano S. Almeida & Napiê G.A. Silva, 2020. "Spillover, public investment and innovation: the impact of public investment in R&D on business innovation," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 40(3), pages 2344-2360.
    4. Mowery, David C., 2010. "Military R&D and Innovation," Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, in: Bronwyn H. Hall & Nathan Rosenberg (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1219-1256, Elsevier.
    5. Toxvaerd, Flavio, 2007. "A theory of optimal deadlines," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 493-513, February.
    6. Lichtenberg, F.R., 1988. "Government Subsidies To Private Military R&D Investmen: Dod'S Ir&D Policy," Papers fb-_88-01, Columbia - Graduate School of Business.
    7. Mowery, David C., 2012. "Defense-related R&D as a model for “Grand Challenges” technology policies," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 41(10), pages 1703-1715.
    8. Toxvaerd, Flavio, 2006. "Time of the essence," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 129(1), pages 252-272, July.
    9. Dietmar Harhoff, 1998. "Vertical Organization, Technology Flows and R&D Incentives: An Exploratory Analysis," CIG Working Papers FS IV 98-02, Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin (WZB), Research Unit: Competition and Innovation (CIG).
    10. Andersson, Thomas & Brännäs, Kurt, 1992. "Nationalizations and Investment Flows: A Panel Study," Working Paper Series 330, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    11. Dominik Schreyer, 2019. "Football spectator no-show behaviour in the German Bundesliga," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 51(45), pages 4882-4901, September.
    12. S. Arunachalam & Sridhar N. Ramaswami & Pol Herrmann & Doug Walker, 2018. "Innovation pathway to profitability: the role of entrepreneurial orientation and marketing capabilities," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 46(4), pages 744-766, July.
    13. Timothy Erickson & Toni M. Whited, 2000. "Measurement Error and the Relationship between Investment and q," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 108(5), pages 1027-1057, October.
    14. Paul W. Miller & Barry R. Chiswick, 2002. "Immigrant earnings: Language skills, linguistic concentrations and the business cycle," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 15(1), pages 31-57.
    15. Fors, Gunnar & Zejan, Mario, 1996. "Overseas R&D by Multinationals in foreign Centers of Excellence," SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance 111, Stockholm School of Economics.
    16. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/7172 is not listed on IDEAS
    17. Heijs, Joost, 2003. "Freerider behaviour and the public finance of R&D activities in enterprises: the case of the Spanish low interest credits for R&D," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 445-461, March.
    18. Butler, Marty & Leone, Andrew J. & Willenborg, Michael, 2004. "An empirical analysis of auditor reporting and its association with abnormal accruals," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(2), pages 139-165, June.
    19. Baiyegunhi, L.J.S. & Oppong, B.B., 2016. "Commercialisation of mopane worm (Imbrasia belina) in rural households in Limpopo Province, South Africa," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 141-148.
    20. MacKinnon, J G, 1989. "Heteroskedasticity-Robust Tests for Structural Change," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 14(2), pages 77-92.
    21. Fenech, Jean-Pierre & Skully, Michael & Xuguang, Han, 2014. "Franking credits and market reactions: Evidence from the Australian convertible security market," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 32(C), pages 1-19.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:nbr:nberwo:3025. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    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.