A Causal Analysis of Defense Spending and Economic Growth

The purpose of this article is to investigate the causal relationship between economic growth and defense spending in fifty-five developing countries. Granger-causality tests are employed to analyze the presence and direction of causality between these two variables. Moreover, the study focuses upon the appropriate representation of the nature of nonstationarities apparent in these two economic time series across different countries. The results suggest that the relationship between defense spending and economic growth cannot be generalized across countries. The actual relationship may vary from one country to another due to the use of a different sample period, as well as differences in the socioeconomic structure and type of government in each country