MILITARY SPENDING IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA - SOME EVIDENCE FOR 1967-85

This article is a contribution to the debate on the determinants and e conomic effects of military expenditure in less-developed economies. R ecent empirical work has suggested that there is much to be gained fro m analysing groups of relatively homogeneous countries, and to this en d it focuses on a sample of thirteen Sub-Saharan African countries ove r the period from 1967 to 1985. The econometric analysis uses data for the group of countries as a whole, a cross-sectional analysis of the country averages, and an analysis of the pooled country data. As regar ds the determinants of military spending, the results suggest that eco nomic factors play an important role in determining the level of milit ary burden across countries and over time for the sample as a whole. W hen the data are pooled, strategic factors such as wars, the size of t he army and inertia become important. In a time-series analysis, milit ary expenditure is also found to have a negative effect on economic de velopment for the countries as a whole, through its negative indirect effects on human resource accumulation, investment allocations and the balance of payments. While this result is not found across countries, or when the data are pooled, the results still imply that there is no significant positive effect of military burden on economic growth. To gether, these results show the value of attempting to capture both tim e-series and cross-sectional effects when analysing the determinants a nd economic effects of military spending and the value of dealing with relatively homogeneous groups of countries.