Trade Costs, Conflicts, and Defense Spending
42 Pages Posted: 15 Jan 2015
Date Written: January 29, 2014
Abstract
This paper develops a quantitative model of trade, military conflicts, and defense spending. Lowering trade costs between two countries reduces probability of an armed conflict between them, causing both to cut defense spending. This in turn causes a domino effect on defense spending by other countries. As a result, both countries and the rest of the world are better off. We estimate the model using data on trade, conflicts, and military spending. We find that, after reduction of costs of trade between a pair of hostile countries, the welfare effect of worldwide defense spending cuts is comparable in magnitude to the direct welfare gains from trade.
Keywords: general equilibrium, gains from trade, defense spending
JEL Classification: C5, C6, F13, F51, H56
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation