Shleifer and Treisman (2005) argue that Russia is a quot;normal country.quot; Their benchmark for normalcy, however, refers primarily to middle-income countries like Mexico and Argentina. We propose that a more meaningful benchmark is the experience of other post-socialist transition countries,...

The main objective of the paper is to decipher the military expenditure--economic growth relationship, taking the level of economic development (income) into consideration. Our findings suggest the following: (i) military expenditure has a significantly negative relationship to economic growth...