The acquisition and procurement of major weapons systems is fraught with difficulties. They tend to be delivered late, over budget and unable to meet requirements. This Element provides an economic analysis of why this happens. Market structure, demand by the military and supply by the arms...

"This book examines the motivations of military interventions in civil wars, with a focus on the role of foreign direct investment (FDI) and the arms trade. The book assumes a state-centric view of international relations, whereby states remain the dominant actors on the world stage. It breaks...

We investigate how oil dependence affects the trade of weapons between countries. We argue that oil-dependent economies have incentives to transfer arms to oil-rich countries to reduce their risk of instability and, as a result, the chances of disruption in the oil industry. We employ gravity...

Resource allocation is a grand strategic choice; strategic autonomy requires resources and defense industrial autonomy. The allocation of resources and the sharing of defense burdens among members of the transatlantic security community is thus a fundamental component of the liberal international...

We analyze how trade openness matters for interstate conflict over productive resources. Our analysis features a terms-of-trade channel that makes security policies trade-regime dependent. Specifically, trade between two adversaries reduces each one’s incentive to arm given the opponent’s...

International attention is increasingly focusing on China and modernisation of the Chinese People's Liberation Army. China holds the key to regional stability in Asia and is inching ahead to become a peer and competitor of United States or the global influence in the next century. The extent to...

Scholars have estimated demand functions for national defense spending and investigated international arms trade for a long time. The relationship between supply and demand for military goods has, however, only been examined on aggregate level or in formal models yet. I investigate how the...