Strategic Defense And Attack For Series And Parallel Reliability Systems: Rejoinder

In our original comment, we showed that Hausken's characterization of Nash equilibrium is invalid for much of the parameter space examined and provided necessary conditions for his solution to hold. Most of the comments in his reply are either tangential or irrelevant. However, several of the claims made in the reply reveal continuing misunderstandings and gaps in his understanding. In this rejoinder, we briefly clarify the fundamental issues.     

Military Spending and Income Inequality:Evidence on Cointegration and Causality for Turkey,1963–2007

This paper investigates a series of unit root, cointegration and causality tests to ascertain the direction of causality between the growth of GNP and defence expenditure in Turkey for the years 1955–2000. The main conclusion is that there is a long‐run equilibrium relationship between GNP and defence expenditures. Furthermore, the short run causality test indicates that there is a unidirectional causality between variables, from defence expenditure to economic growth. In order to see the effect of a shock, we employed impulse response analyses. The results show that GNP decreased during the period then output finally recovered from the initial shock to defence expenditures.     

An alliance between Cyprus and Greece: assessing its partners’ relative security contribution

The issue that this paper tackles is the assessment of the relative security benefits that Cyprus and Greece derive in the context of their cooperation on defence matters. This form of cooperation, known as the ‘Integrated Defence Space Doctrine’, aims at defending their interests in the Aegean Sea and the broader East Mediterranean theatre. The paper relies heavily on earlier research on this topic, which deals with the Greek–Cypriot alliance facing an arms race against Turkey, and uses a coefficient especially designed to assess the optimal levels of security and the associated defence expenditure of the two allies. A comparison of the relative security coefficient values for the two allies suggests that the security benefit that Greece derives thanks to its alliance with Cyprus exceeds the corresponding Cypriot benefit by far. Given the importance assigned to human resources by this index, in conjunction with the demographic problems of Greece, this conclusion justifies the recent Greek defence policy revision, emphasizing quality, capital equipment and flexibility of forces. This revision aims at satisfying the security requirements of the alliance and the increasing demands of an arms race against Turkey.     

Aid versus sanctions for taming oppressors: theory and case study of the Iraqi Kurds

We model an oppressor aiming at victimizing an excluded group in his country, with two main variants. A foreign power affects his behaviour using either conditional aid, subject to the dictator’s participation constraint, or the threat of sanctions, broadly defined, subject to the credibility constraint. The choice between the two is either determined by the latter, or by their relative cost. Aid is preferred when the threat of sanctions is ineffective, and sanctions are too expensive. Sanctions might be imposed, if the threat is ineffective. A case study of the Iraqi Kurds after Iraq was subject to sanctions is presented.     

Estimating defence budget saving from disarmament: the United States’ case

Probing the technology in the production of US national defence by using a dynamic cost‐function model with adjustment costs, this paper evaluates the effect of reducing the level of national defence on the defence budget saving. Our inquiry involves estimating the defence production structure without output data for non‐market goods that are normally unavailable. Our findings include: (i) the United States behaves rationally to minimize cost in the production of national defence; (ii) the adjustment costs are larger in disarmament than in military build‐up; (iii) due to the adjustment costs peculiar to disarmament, the defence budget saving from disarmament appears small, but cutbacks allow great savings on the defence budget.