Opportunity Costs of Defence: A Comment on Dabelko and McCormick

A critical appraisal is made of an article in this journal by Dabelko and McCormick. In the article, the authors try to estimate the opportunity cost of defence. With simple tools from economic analysis it is shown that their methodological approach reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of this important and useful concept. In the final section, some difficulties encountered when attempting a correct empirical analysis of opportunity costs are briefly discussed, and some of the important factors to consider are pointed out.