Prices and quantities in the arms trade* |
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Authors: | Paul Levine Fotis Mouzakis Ron Smith |
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Institution: | 1. Department of Economics , University of Surrey , Guildford, Surrey, GU2 5XH, UK E-mail: P.Levine@surrey.ac.uk.;2. Department of Economics , University of Surrey , Guildford, Surrey, GU2 5XH, UK;3. Birkbeck College , London, UK |
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Abstract: | There are two main sources of information about the Arms Trade, SIPRI and ACDA. These two sources give very different pictures of the evolution of the market, primarily because their measures are designed to capture conceptually different features. Although they are both expressed in constant dollars, the SIPRI series is designed to be a volume index of physical transfers, the ACDA series a constant price value index. Thus in principle, the ratio of the ACDA to SIPRI series should provide an implicit price index of arms; though in practice there are many measurement problems. In this paper, we discuss the basis of these indices and show that the ratio, the implicit price, not only looks plausible in the light of the evolution of the market, but has a significant negative effect on the demand for arms imports in an econometric equation. |
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Keywords: | Arms trade data Demand for arms imports |
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