Evasion costs and the theory Of conscription

Many countries of Europe are moving from conscripted to volunteer military forces. This paper examines the current status of those conversions and interprets them in light of an economic model of the military manpower procurement system choice developed in Warner and Asch (1996). The theoretical model is expanded to include the social costs of individuals' attempts to evade conscription and the government's cost of preventing it. Differences in evasion costs may be a significant factor in some European countries' decisions to keep conscription and other countries' decisions to end it.