Detecting Problems in Military Expenditure Data Using Digital Analysis

The UN asks governments to report key figures of their annual military budgets with the aim of creating trust among member states. This goal can only be achieved if the data reported is accurate. However, although there are many reasons for governments to falsify data, the UN does not check for manipulation. In this paper, we apply Benford’s law to the military expenditure data of 27 states taken from the UN register. Our analysis of the first digits shows that the states with the greatest deviations from the expected Benford distribution and therefore the lowest data quality are the USA and the UK.     

Guns and butter? Military expenditure and health spending on the eve of the Arab Spring

We examine the validity of the guns-versus-butter hypothesis in the pre-Arab Spring era. Using panel data from 1995 to 2011 – the eve of the Arab uprisings – we find no evidence that increased security needs as measured by the number of domestic terrorist attacks are complemented by increased military spending or more importantly ‘crowd out’ government expenditure on key public goods such as health care. This suggests that both expenditure decisions were determined by other considerations at the government level.