PUBLIC-OPINION - A POWERFUL PREDICTOR OF UNITED-STATES DEFENSE SPENDING - A COMMENT

A recent paper in Defence Economics suggests that ''a single variable, the public opinion balance, ... when accompanied by a control variabl e measuring the proportion of responses in the 'residuum' (no opinion or keep the status quo), permits an accurate prediction of subsequent changes in the rate of change of U.S. defense outlays from the mid-196 0s through the 1980s'' (Higgs and Kilduff, 1993, p. 227). In contrast, this comment provides evidence that since 1986 the Higgs-Kilduff mode l frequently mispredicts the direction of U.S. defense spending. In ad dition, the average prediction error, and its variance, since 1986 con sistently exceeds the average prediction error, and its variance, for the years prior to 1986.