The Illusion of Choice: Defense and Welfare in Advanced Industrial Democracies, 1948-1978

Abstract

Research on the tendency of governments to trade off welfare spending for defense has generated diverse and often contradictory findings. This study attempts to clarify the issue of trade-offs by examining expenditure patterns since 1948 for the four major NA TO allies: United States, United Kingdom, Federal Republic of Germany, and France. When viewed from the perspective of long-term trends in shares of outlays, trade-offs are evident. When short-term changes in expenditure, which are more germane to the potential for one spending category to benefit at the expense of the other are studied, no pattern of trade-off can be detected. A three-equation model is estimated to control for the variety of possible determining factors of public resource allocation. In none of the four nations does a pattern of trade-off emerge, except in periods of wartime or postwar reconstruction. These findings are consistent with the ability of governments to finance new spending through either increased taxes or larger budget deficits. The growing disinclination to use these methods, however, suggests that the potential for trade-offs has perhaps reappeared in the 1980s.

Revisiting the “Guns versus Butter” Argument in China (1950–2014): New Evidence from the Continuous Wavelet Analysis

“…In addition, Zhang, et al [6] confirmed the positive relationship by measuring the social welfare using inputs and outputs. However, a non-existent relationship has also been found in the literature [13][14][15][19][20][21][22][23]. For instance, Caputo [19] showed defense expenditure has no impact on social welfare in Australia, Sweden, the UK and the US.…”

Fiscal Policy in the American States

“…At the federal level, the concept of expenditure tradeoffs was first used by scholars to describe the interrelationship of "guns vs. butter"-that is, the tradeoff between defense and domestic spending (Domke, Eichenberg, and Kelleher, 1983;Mintz, 1989;Mintz and Huang, 1990;Russet, 1982). There has been some consideration of spending tradeoffs at the American state level (Garand and Hendrick, 1991;Nicholson-Crotty, Theobold, and Wood, 2006), though the scholarly literature is less well developed.…”

¿Se financió la defensa a costa del gasto social y la economía en el siglo XX? El dilema cañones versus mantequilla

“…En varios de ellos se ha com-98 joSé jurADo SánCHEz parado el gasto total en defensa con el gasto total social o público (Szymansky, 1973; Wilensky, 1975;Clayton, 1976;Domke, Eichenberg y Kelleher, 1983). Pero, con el paso del tiempo, lo más frecuente fue que las investigaciones compararan el gasto militar total con uno o varios componentes del gasto social (sanidad y educación, sobre todo, pero también vivienda, asistencia social y departamentos de gasto corriente) (Peroff y Podolak- Warren, 1979;russett, 1982;Mintz y Huang, 1991;Mok y Duval, 1992;Gifford, 2006).…”

“…Y, segundo, la de que suponía que el aumento del gasto en defensa afectaría negativamente a la sanidad privada cuando aquél se financiara con aumentos de impuestos en lugar de con incrementos de la oferta monetaria o de la deuda pública, ya que tributos crecientes son más perjudiciales que las otras dos vías de financiarla porque los salarios de los contratos de larga duración no siguen el ritmo de los precios y, por lo tanto, los consumidores tendrán menos ingreso real disponible para destinarlo al cuidado de la salud. Domke, Eichenberg y Kelleher (1983) propusieron varias hipótesis suponiendo que el gasto militar era determinado, esencialmente, por la política exterior y que en el gasto social y total influían las restricciones presupuestarias, los grupos de interés domésticos, la cuantía del ingreso y la situación económica. Mintz (1989) aspiraba a comprobar si los programas militares intensivos en capital detraían recursos de los programas sociales y si los intensivos en trabajo aliviaron las cargas de la sanidad y la educación.…”