Many economists have analyzed the efficiency of a volunteered army relative to a conscripted army. However, they have rarely studied the working of real-world alternative, market-based, military institutions where military obligations are traded among the citizens. This paper fills this gap by...

Milton Friedman was the leading public proponent for an all-volunteer military. This chapter traces his influence upon the national debate over conscription, which culminated in Friedman’s service on the Gates Commission. Friedman's argument relied on economic reasoning and appeal to...

The book describes the social costs of conscription in the Netherlands using methods from Public Finance and Law and Economics. This analysis shows that both the tax for the population, or the subsidy for the armed forces, and the lack of scarcity considering human resources caused by the draft,...