Developments within the UK in the Ministry of Defence's policy on defence equipment acquisition demand changes in the scale and allocation of the Ministry's budget for defence research. To facilitate the national debate on those changes, this paper reviews the key questions about UK defence...

Opportunity structure theories of civil war onset argue that certain societal preconditions lower the costs of rebel mobilization. This approach, however, has not provided an account of how these structures transform lower level political violence into civil war because civil war is treated as a...

This paper analyses the impact of terrorist activity on international tourist flows. To this end, we have estimated a cross-sectional gravity equation for tourism from the G-7 countries to a sample of 134 destinations over the period 2001-2003. Within this framework, we evaluate the deviation...

A two-period exchange model is developed where production decisions in the first period determine the amount of resources available in the second period. Each agent allocates resources to defend its production and attack the production of the other agent. Production, conflict and exchange occur...

Traditionally, the EU has protected its national defence industries (through Article 296). There are now policy initiatives to create a European defence equipment market (EDEM) and a European defence technology and industrial base (EDTIB). This article assesses these policy initiatives. It...

Mercantilism (16th-18th centuries) is a set of precepts concerning economic policy. It places the State at the heart of national economic development. Wealth is conceived as serving power. Mercantilists share a static conception of international economic relations, considering that one country...

Critics of trade liberalization argue that globalization increases countries' vulnerability to economic shocks and hence may exacerbate domestic social conflict. Such social conflict may also be transformed into armed conflict. Others argue that globalization promotes economic growth and reduces...

This paper focuses on the influence of military spending on European economic growth. The estimated regressions are based on Barro's (1991) growth model, which controls for economic institutional variation across countries. The cross-section and panel data analyses cover the period 1960-2000....

We analyse the determinants of the number of military personnel, military expenditure and arms imports using a panel data of all available countries with data from 1984-2006. The number of military personnel increases with the extent of external threat and with conscription. There is evidence...

By testing for structural breaks in defense expenditures, the dates of change in the pattern of defense expenditures for the NATO allies are determined. If NATO members are responding to a common threat, the breaks should be similar, in both direction and dates, for defense expenditures. The...