This chapter defines defense economics and indicates how it differs from other subfields of economics. The nature and topics of defense economics are presented. A brief history of the field is also reviewed. The current importance of defense economics in the post-cold war era is discussed....

This chapter discusses developing (non-high income) states' participation in the production and trade of parts or whole units of major conventional weapons, their integration into a transnationalized global arms industry, and the underlying industrial prerequisites that make that participation...

Defense economics derives from and is embedded in the multi-dimensional array of issues each country must address when providing for its national security. Applying economic concepts and methods, it attempts to evaluate this great diversity of security related questions, and to understand how...

Since the end of the Cold War, the world remains a dangerous place with new threats: regional conflicts, transnational terrorist networks, rogue states, and weapons of mass destruction (i.e., chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear). The second volume of the Handbook of Defense Economics...

The article presents a history of South Africa's arms industry. It charts the creation of Armscor, the post-apartheid breaking up of its procurement and production roles to form the current arms producer, Denel, and the even more recent restructuring of the industry. It is a story that shows the...

In this paper I develop indices and rankings of potential and actual arms production for about one hundred and fifty countries for data pertaining to the early to mid-1990s. The countries' ranked indices are then compared. I find evidence that countries that can produce arms (potential) do...

In this chapter we present the main characteristics and problems involved in the study of the arms trade: product definition and data, strategic aspects of the arms trade and regulation. We illustrate these aspects using the latest theoretical and empirical literature on arms trade. The papers...

This paper models the determination of the defence industrial base - the number of different military systems a country decides to maintain. High R&D costs means that few countries can afford to produce major weapons systems and the producers also import systems. Non-producers rely on imports...

Considered here is an arms race in which weapons production exhibits increasing returns to scale technology that stems from the increasing importance of information, electronics, computers, software, etc. in modern weapons systems. Just as in general equilibrium theory, increasing returns to...