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....

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...

Weapons programs are criticized for cost overruns, delays in delivery and failure to meet their operational requirements. Critics focus on the power and influence of the military-industrial-political complex. This chapter addresses these controversial areas involving arms industries, alternative...

Voluntary military alliances, such as NATO, are often criticized for failing to exploit the opportunities for equipment standardization and free trade. However, nationalism means that governments adopt a variety of industrial policies for purchasing defense equipment, leading to departures from...

This chapter surveys the past applications of game theory to the study of terrorism. By capturing the strategic interplay between terrorists and targeted governments, game theory is an appropriate methodology for investigating terrorism and counterterrorism. Game theory has been used to examine...

This chapter reviews game-theoretic and choice-theoretic depictions of terrorist behavior. A simple game-theoretic framework is presented to ascertain under what circumstances a government would want to precommit itself to a no-negotiation strategy. In another game model, we analyze whether two...

Arms races - enduring rivalries between pairs of hostile powers, which prompt competitive acquisition of military capability - appear to be a pervasive phenomenon. From the past Cold War competition, between the US and the USSR, to present regional antagonisms, such as India and Pakistan, arms...

The `long decade of disarmament' between the mid-1980s and the late 1990s provides ample evidence of the effects of a substantial defense downturn. The chapter starts out with a brief discussion of various concepts of conversion, focusing on a resource-reuse perspective. This is followed by...

This chapter provides a survey of research on the defense industrial base (DIB) focusing on the advanced industrial capitalist economies. It starts by looking at the problems of definition and measurement and how these have been dealt with in practice. This is followed by an overview of the...

The chapter surveys the empirical literature concerning the measurement of terrorism, effectiveness of counterterrorism policies, the economic consequences of terrorism, and the economic causes of terrorism. In Section 2, terrorist incidents are grouped according to incident type, victim, and...