Time Varying Determinants of US Demand for Defense Spending in the post-Cold War Era

Abstract

We adopt the maximum entropy bootstrap methodology in a rolling window framework in order to investigate the time varying determinants of the US demand for defense spending. Our results based on annual data between 1967 and 2018 show that the US defense demand is mainly driven by lagged military burden, economic growth, GDP share of non-military government spending, election cycle, relative costliness of defense as well as the Russian and the Chinese military burdens. Moreover, the signs and the magnitude of the coefficients show significant variations throughout the sample period. The results also provide a strong evidence of the rising rivalry between the US and China, reflecting the developments in the world economy and the global military arena in the last two decades.