Since Olson's (1965) The Logic of Collective Action, the exploitation hypothesis, in which the rich shoulders the provision burden of public goods for the poor, has held sway despite empirical exceptions. To address such exceptions, we establish two alternative exploitation hypotheses based on...

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 paper extends the joint product model of military alliances to apply to the new strategic doctrine adopted by NATO in the 1990s. In particular, a choice must be made between protecting one's own territory and pooling forces for an alliancewide rapid reaction force. This new model accounts...

This article evaluates the contribution of James M. Buchanan’s theory of clubs. At the outset, the article distinguishes club goods from pure public goods. Next, the article distills the basic mathematical structure of Buchanan’s treatment of clubs. This is followed by some key variants of...

This paper makes the case that nonrivalness and nonexcludability properties of public goods are still relevant and crucial considerations. Although these characteristics of publicness may be socially endogenous with institutional choice, these properties are not necessarily determined by this...

Since Olson’s (1965) The Logic of Collective Action, the exploitation hypothesis, in which the rich shoulders the provision burden of public goods for the poor, has held sway despite empirical exceptions. To address such exceptions, we establish two alternative exploitation hypotheses based on...

This article displays the importance and richness of Hirshleifer's social composition function in public good applications, particularly those in defense economics. This function indicates how individual contributions to the public good combine to determine the overall level of the good that is...

This note refutes criticism raised by Solomon about past tests used to ascertain the concordance between NATO benefits and burdens. In so doing, a case is made for keeping the benefit proxy based on exposed borders. Moreover, a truer sensitivity analysis than that offered by Solomon is suggested.