Benoit Revisited:

In the early 1970s, Emile Benoit shocked development economists by presenting positive cross-country correlations between military expenditure rates and economic growth rates in less developed countries (LDCs). This article reviews the long debate that has followed. While the studies surveyed here differ widely in method and focus, the empirical results point to similar conclusions. First, efforts at re-estimating Benoit's correlation coefficients for different samples and different time periods all fail to reproduce Benoit's results. Second, while some studies uncover evidence of positive effects of military spending through human capital formation and technological “spin-off” effects, models that allow military spending to affect growth through multiple channels find that, while military spending may stimulate growth through some channels, it retards it through others, and the net effect is negative. The most important negative effect is that higher military spending reduces national saving rates, thereby reducing rates of capital accumulation. The existence of positive effects of military spending on economic growth, as conjectured by Benoit, still cannot be ruled out. However, the recent econometric evidence points to the conclusion that these positive effects, if they exist, are small relative to the negative effects, and that, overall, military spending has a weak but adverse impact on economic growth in developing countries.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/67478/2/10.1177_0022002789033002007.pd

The Budgetary Consequences of Middle East Peace: What are the Economic Impacts and Causal Linkages?

in J.W. Wright ed., Economic and Political Impediments to Middle East Peace (London: Macmillan, 2000

Differential Employment Patterns for Citizens and Non-Citizens in Science and Engineering in the United States: Minting and Competitive Effects

The consequences of the heavy inflow of foreign talent for U.S. scientists and engineers over the period 1973-1997 are examined using data from the Survey of Doctorate Recipients. Of particular interest is whether non-citizens trained in the United States have displaced citizens from jobs in science and engineering (S&E). Using a novel adaptation of the shift-share technique, it is shown that citizen S&E doctorates have fewer jobs in S&E and fewer academic jobs than their non-citizen counterparts for two reasons: the citizen doctoral population has experienced slower growth than the non-citizen doctoral population, and citizen S&E doctorates have been displaced. Whether the displacement observed was a voluntary response of citizens to the lure of better opportunities elsewhere or an involuntary response indicative of having been pushed out by foreign talent remains to be determined. Copyright 2004 Gatton College of Business and Economics, University of Kentucky..

The Changing Interplay Between European Cities and Intermodal Transport Networks (1970s–2010s)

International audienceEuropean cities, like most of the world’s cities, are to some degree dependent upon maritime transport for their development, as more than 90% of seaborne trade volume is carried by sea. This also applies to Europe’s external trade. While cities possessing ports play a crucial role in the distribution of goods traffic in such a context, the maritime influence exerted by global trade on non-port, inland cities have not been so far studied from a combined sea-land perspective. The results show a differentiation of the European territory in terms of modal specialization, core-periphery, polycentricity, and intermodal centrality / accessibility. We map the maritime specialization of European cities in recent decades, showing that combined sea-land centrality has stable but different relationships according to the type of place considered. The conclusion discusses the outcomes of our results for policy and further research on coupled networks and urban studies