Using novel data on military spending for 129 countries in the period 1988–2013, this paper provides new evidence on the effects of government spending on output in advanced and developing countries. Identifying government-spending shocks with an exogenous variation in military spending,...

Using 25 years of military spending data from more than a hundred countries, this paper provides new evidence on the effect of government spending on output. Following a popular assumption that military spending is unlikely to respond to output at business-cycle frequencies — and exploiting...