ABSTRACT
Military expenditures have long played an important role in the American political economy, if for no other reason than that they are by a wide margin the largest category of discretionary federal spending. Because of the size and relative controllability of the defense budget, suspicion lingers that it is used for political and economic purposes unrelated to national security. One possibility is that defense spending is used countercyclically to mitigate the effects of recessions and spur economic recovery. Another is that defense spending is used as an explicitly electoral tool, with spending levels rising just before elections to stimulate the economy and improve incumbents’ electionday prospects.
