| Publication |
2012.
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| Summary/Abstract |
This paper analyses the military expenditures in Italy over the period 1988-2008. The estimation of a conventional model of military expenditure shows that the choices of military expenditure by Italian governments are influenced by US and, to a lesser extent, the other NATO countries' defence spending. In particular, the negative association between the US and NATO average military expenditure on the Italian one suggests a free-rider behaviour of Italy. Eventually, we focus on the relationship between productivity and military expenditure. The results suggest that there is a negative association between productivity and military expenditures in the long run. Namely, if military expenditures were substituted by civilian expenditures, the Italian overall productivity would be expected to improve.
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