Essays on economic growth, military expenditure, armed conflict, and corruption

Abstract

This thesis is a collection of three essays, which investigate the direct and indirect impacts of military expenditure, armed conflicts, and corruption on economic growth. The first essay is set in the context of Pakistan and India from 1960-2019. Pakistan and India provide particularly useful case studies because both countries allocate substantially higher budgets to their military sectors due to their protracted internal and external conflicts. Moving on to the second essay, where we extend this analysis to 61 countries by using data from 1975-2018. There are two main reasons to extend this analysis: First, to investigate this relationship at a broader level. Second, to check how this relationship varies across income groups. The final paper introduces the inclusion of corruption into the analysis and reduces the time period from 2000-2018 because of the unavailability of data on corruption before 2000. This essay investigates two important questions:(1) how does military expenditure impact economic growth in the absence and presence of corruption? (2) how does the relationship between military expenditure, armed conflicts and economic growth vary if the time period changes from 1975-2019 to 2000-2019.