The Effects of Military Spending on Economic Activity: Evidence from State Procurement Spending

Abstract

The authors use state data from the period 1963-94 to estimate the response of employment growth to military procurement spending. The state-year panel provides greater variation in both variables than aggregate data. There are two main findings. First, military procurement spending does explain a statistically significant degree of the variation in employment growth across states, even in the presence of fixed effects for time and state and other controls. Second, the authors find evidence in support of a nonlinear relationship between procurement spending and employment growth. In particular, large adverse state procurement shocks have proportionately larger effects on state employment growth rates. Copyright 1997 by Ohio State University Press.