We examine the presence of budgetary trade-offs between defence spending and welfare expenditure in the case of Greece, the country with the highest defence burden in the European Union. The findings reported herein point to a positive trade-off between education, social expenditure and defence.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the revenue-expenditure nexus in the case of the 15 members of the European Union. Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses a VECM framework to determine the causal ordering between these two macroeconomic aggregates. Findings – The...