Opportunity costs of military expenditures: Evidence from the United States

All economic activities are costly. The most visible costs are delineated in direct monetary terms — one way of defining an activity, such as a meal, a trip to the movies, or a vacation, is in terms of the required outlays in the medium of exchange. Larger, societal activities are also so defined — the costs of national security or health care run in the hundreds of billions of dollars in the United States, and national debates around these issues are often couched in terms of the adequacy of the spending levels and their changes over time.