The end of the Cold War led to a large drop in world military expenditure, rising fixed costs of developing weapons because of technological changes and a reduction of national preference for domestic weapons. Alongside these developments has been an increase in concentration in the world arms...

This paper reviews some of the theoretical and econometric issues involved in estimating growth models that include military spending. While the mainstream growth literature has not found military expenditure to be a significant determinant of growth, much of the defence economics literature has...