At just under £8 billion, spending on schools and childcare is the second-largest area of public service spending in Scotland, behind spending on health. While councils rather than the Scottish Government itself determine how much to spend on schools, they do so in the context of a funding and...

This paper revisits the empirical analysis of Nakamura and Steinsson (2014). I reconstruct and extend the original dataset to cover the period 1966-2019, harmonizing two major sources of data: the Defense Contract Action Data System (DCADS) and USAspending.gov. I discuss how to aggregate these...

The European Union is grappling with the challenge of increasing defence expenditure while maintaining fiscal discipline under the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP). The European Commission has proposed activating the national escape clause available under the SGP to accommodate defence spending...

What determines the effectiveness of military buildups? We introduce the concept of the military multiplier: the percentage increase in military equipment an additional dollar buys. It varies with the costs of allocating resources to military production, depending, among other things, on the...

English councils saw big cuts to their funding during the 2010s, with spending on some services down between 40% and 70% over the decade. And although like virtually all public services, funding for local government was increased during the 2019-24 parliament, councils' finances are still under...

Like spending on the NHS, and schools, English council funding has increased over the current parliament. But that follows a decade of austerity in the 2010s. And despite funding increases, councils are again under significant financial pressure, with increases in spending outpacing revenues and...