Defence expenditures have both costs and benefits to the economy. The costs of defence expenditures are mainly emphasized as opportunity costs. On the other hand, defence spending may have growth-promoting potential benefits: a rise in defence spending may result in a higher aggregate demand, production and employment. This paper examines empirically the effects of military expenditures on economic growth for Middle Eastern countries and Turkey, for the time-period 1989-1999. The relationship between military expenditure and economic growth is investigated by using cross-section and dynamic panel estimation techniques. Empirical analysis indicates that military expenditure enhances economic growth in the Middle Eastern countries and Turkey as a whole.Military expenditure, Economic growth, Defence economics, Dynamic panel data analysis,

This paper provides a country survey of the Turkish defence economy. Turkey is a member of NATO alliance and is strategically located between Europe and Middle East. Moreover, Turkey has a high defence burden and high economic growth. The first part of the survey presents a brief economic background of Turkey, its armed forces, the defence industry, its modernisation and trends in Turkish defence expenditure. The rest of the paper focuses on the relationships between defence spending and economic growth. The effect of defence spending on economic growth is econometrically estimated using a supply side model. Both externality effects and the size effect of defence spending are estimated for Turkey. The study concludes that defence expenditure stimulates economic growth while externalities from the defence sector to the rest of economy are negative for Turkey.Turkey, Defence expenditure, Economic growth, Turkish defence industry,

Although a number of studies concerning Turkish defence-growth relation have been published in recent years, little attention is given the demand for Turkish defence expenditure. This is an important issue for understanding which variables contribute to the determination of the demand for military expenditure. However, it is difficult to develop a general theory or a standard empirical approach for the determination of the demand military expenditure. This study models and estimates the demand for Turkish defence expenditure for the period 1951-1998 using autoregressive distributed lag approach to cointegration (ARDL) following the methodology outlined in Pesaran and Shin (1999). This procedure can be applied regardless of the stationary properties of the variables in the sample and allows for inferences on long-run estimates, which is not possible under alternative cointegration procedures. The findings suggest that Turkish defence spending is determined by NATO's defence spending, Greece's defence spending and some security considerations.

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It is often argued that defence expenditures, and in particular arms imports, are one of the main reasons for the recent increasing trend of Turkey's external debt. This paper empirically examines the relationships between Turkey's defence expenditure and external debt for the period 1979-2000 using Engle-Granger methodology. The findings show no clear evidence of defence-debt relationships for the period analysed.Turkey's Defence expenditure, External debt, Cointegration,