Military spending, public debt, and economic growth in Cameroon

Abstract

This paper investigates the effect of military spending and public debt on economic growth in Cameroon over the period 1980–2021. Due to the nature of the data, the methodology involves AutoRegressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) models. The results indicate that public debt and military expenditures harm economic growth in the short and long runs. The findings also reveal that the interaction between public debt and military spending reduces growth efforts and highlight the existence of sustainability thresholds for public debt (56.42% of GDP) and military spending (between 1.29% and 1.47% of GDP), ceteris paribus. In addition, this study shows that official development assistance and the size of the government enhance economic growth, while natural resource rents, corruption, and inflation contribute negatively to growth. Robustness checks show that the interaction between natural resource rents and ethnic tensions reduces growth efforts. However, the interaction between food insecurity and official development assistance absorbed inequalities related to the distribution of national wealth. Based on these findings, recommendations are made to the Cameroonian government.