Military Expenditure and Arms Trade: Alternative Data Sources

Worldwide military spending, 1990–95

“…J./ Among the most important of these is the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the International Institute for Strategic Studies, and two databases maintained by the International Monetary Fund: the World Economic Outlook (WEO) database, and the Government Finance Statistics (GFS) database. As noted in Happe and Wakeman-Linn (1994), one difficulty in comparing aggregate military expenditure across data sources is their differing country coverage. The timeliness with which data are reported also varies markedly for each data source; WEO data are the most current, while SIPRI data are available until 1994, but with more complete coverage until 1993, and IISS data generally are available through 1994.…”

“…I/ For a comprehensive overview of sources, see Happe and Wakeman-Linn (1994) . This Appendix is drawn from that source.…”

“…However/ the sample size in SIPRI for transition economies is only between 5 and 9 countries for various years. In the IISS data for 6 transition economies/ spending declines from 3.0 to 2.3 percent of GDP between 1990 and1994. 3/ In the IISS data/ military spending by African countries remained constant/ at 3 percent of GDP/ between 1990 and 1994/ although military spending for Sub-Saharan African did decline by 0.8 percentage points of GDP over the period.…”

“….3/ For a review of alternative sources of data on military expenditures and arms trade, see Happe and Wakeman-Linn (1994) .…”