The USA and other countries spend a significant portion of their defense budgets on personnel. Effective management of military forces requires an understanding of the economics of military manpower. Over the past three decades economists have produced a substantial body of research about the...

Since the publication of Volume 1 of the Handbook of Defense Economics, key events have shaped the defense manpower research agenda and called for research to help policymakers deal with the challenges that these factors presented. One event was the end of the Cold War, which permitted drastic...