Many international relations theorists suggest that improved military capabilities will make the use or threat of military force a more attractive policy choice. Tests of this argument are complicated because policy makers’anticipation of their future needs for military capabilities could...

Three complementary explanations are tested for the phenomenon that, since 1940, the inflation rate for military goods and services has been higher on average than the inflation rates for the nonmilitary government sector or the economy as a whole. First, higher rates of public-sector inflation...