The Military Industrial Complex

This paper reviews the origin and theoretical foundation of the concept Military-Industrial Complex and explains the key issues involved in the literature on the MIC in the Cold war context. It then considers the implications for the MIC of some main post-Cold War developments, with particular emphasis on the arms industry, its structure and effects. It then assesses the degree to which the end of the Cold War may result in a fundamental change of the MIC.Arms Industry; MIC

Industrial Policy: Federal, State, and Local Response

During the past twenty years, many economists and policymakers have strongly advocated that the United States formulate a national industrial policy to improve the competitiveness of American firms in the global marketplace. These proposals call for both direct and indirect assistance to specific industrial sectors. Some would contend that U.S. industrial policies are being challenged by newer growth theories that shift the focus from the nation as the basic unit of industrial geography to regions and municipalities. There is little argument about the need for industrial policies that tie national, state, and local initiatives together. However, confusion and disagreement exist as to what defines industrial policy and what its appropriate level should be. This article addresses the debate about national industrial policy and state and local responses to industrial policy and offers a summary of key themes in the current literature

Military downsizing in the United States: A study of military base closures in California from the late 1980\u27s to early 1990\u27s

Military Downsizing in the United States examines military downsizing efforts during the late 1980\u27s and early 1990\u27s. It begins with an outline of the historical development of the United States military, and it then evaluates the key economic and political factors involved in the recent decision to close bases around the country. Military Downsizing in the United States then evaluates three separate base closure case studies in California. The case studies are Fort Ord, the Long Beach Naval Complex, and Norton Air Force Base. The goal of these evaluations is to determine whether interest group or elite politics is controlling the base closure process

El papel de la gran propiedad militar en el proceso de construcción de la ciudad italiana: el caso particular del barrio Flaminio-Guido Reni

La investigación aborda el análisis del proceso de construcción de la ciudad italiana durante el del último tercio del siglo XX y principios de XXI, a partir de las grandes propiedades procedentes de las instalaciones militares desmanteladas El trabajo analiza la gran propiedad militar en el contexto urbano, su condición de “capital fijo en suelo”, del que se requieren nuevas rentabilidades, tanto económicas como sociales. Es, en este sentido, cómo se prestará especial atención a la relación entre “gran propiedad militar”, “agentes inmobiliarios” y “capital financiero”. Parece evidente que, a partir del fenómeno de abandono que protagonizan, se produce una relación estrecha entre propiedad, financiación y promotores inmobiliarios. La propiedad, que antes tenía una destinación de uso, deja de tenerlo cuando este uso entra en posesión de un promotor inmobiliario, de una entidad financiera, del especulador habitual, en una palabra, del “gran capital”, que se encarga de la realización de nuevas actuaciones urbanas.The research deals with the analysis of the Italian city construction process of the three last decades of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century starting from the great properties coming from dismantled military installations. This work analyzes military great property in urban context, its condition of “soil capital”, from which new economic and social returns are required. It is, in this sense, how special attention will be paid to the relationship between “great military property”, “real estate agents” and “financial capital”. It seems evident that, based on the military abandonment phenomenon, it exists a close relationship between property, financing and real estate developers. The property, with a previous use, when it ceases, comes into the possession of a real estate developer, a financial institution, the usual speculator, in a word, the “great capital”, is responsible for the realization of new urban actions

Scope Economy And Issues In Technology Management

In the 1980s, studies of technology transfer in dual-use industries have suggested a slow down in military technology spillovers to the civilian sector. This paper takes an econometric approach to measuring the bilateral spillover effect using the airframe manufacturing industry as a case study. The diffusion of technology benefits the industrial art regardless of where technological innovation is originated.  When horizontal spillover is measured as a bilateral flow of technology transfer regardless of the direction of the flow, i.e., either from military to civilian or from civilian to military, we find no evidence of a slow down, in airframe manufacturing at least, between 1961 and 1985, a period of rapid technological change in both military and commercial aircraft production. We also trace the flow of technological development in aircraft engine and measure its effect downstream on aircraft manufacturing productivity to obtain an estimate for any vertical spillover.  We find a negative relationship between upstream innovation and downstream manufacturing cost, but the linkage effect is statistically insignificant.  We suggest that further study should be pursued in a framework incorporating some concepts from organizational theory to better understand the differences in institutional structure that affect the adaptation and development of dual-use technologies, and the social setting that become necessary to achieve dual-use. &nbsp

Technological Reconstruction of the Global Economy

The chapter addresses the technological evolution of global economy since the yearly post war years until the beginning of world crisis in 2008. The author explains spectacular growth, demonstrated in the world economy, by implication of technologies, invented during “the golden age of technologies”, the dual-use peculiarity for the majority of them and their subsequent transfer from the leading countries to the less developed, enforced the extension in scale of production and markets. It should be recognized that the technological system, launched after the World War II represents the backbone of the contemporary global economy, despite the different role of its main drivers: manufacturing production, trade in goods and services or foreign direct investments. The theoretical model of the steady-state growth most appropriately describes how the increments in capital and investments enforce the economic growth, no matter of where there are originating from. The 2008 global crisis reveals the exhaustion of the “technological source” for continuing growth of the world economy, reflecting in many ways the emerging discrepancy between technological development and economic growth: deindustrialization of the leading economies, “bubble effect”, eroding the foundation for economic sustainability, “Dutch disease” for the oil-dependent countries, the bias toward the energy resources in the world trade in general and, of course, worldwide growing militarization. The chapter highlights the necessity for the revision of that states of affairs in the world economy and proposes in where to start creating the new global technological system as the new backbone for restarting the economic growth and international civil cooperation

Rendering Death and Destruction Visible: Counting the Costs of War

This paper examines what costs are included and which are excluded from a war budget and why it is in the best interests of the US political elite to under-cost warfare. It provides a social accounting for war that goes beyond the economic by documenting the human and social consequences of conflict. In so doing, it demonstrates the potential of social reporting for emancipation. If the US government was required to disclose the social and human costs of a war, the horror would be revealed, making it difficult to rationalize violence as a means to an end