The Effect of Military Expenditures on Human Developement based on the Selected Countries’ Level of Developement with an Emphasis On Islamic Republic of Iran

Molla Esmaeili Dehshiri, Hassan; Ghaffari, Farhad

The Effect of Military Expenditures on Human Developement based on the Selected Countries’ Level of Developement with an Emphasis On Islamic Republic of Iran

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

Hassan Molla Esmaeili Dehshiri ¹

Farhad Ghaffari ²

¹ PHD in Economics, Islamic Azad University, Tehran Science and Research Branch

² Associate Professor, Faculty of Islamic Azad University, Tehran Science and Research Branch

Abstract

One of the main economic goals of any country is to develop social welfare and maintain sustainable development which neither of those is possible unless human developement uccures. Government Expenditures is an effective factor of human developement. The effect of government expenditures, especially defense expenditures on economic variables have always been important in the fields of economics and defense economics which their interaction determines the level of this effect. Considering the high importance of this field, in this paper we survey the effects of military expenditures on human developement of four groups of countries with different levels of development during 2000 to 2015 using panel data analysis. Results show that in countries with very high level of human developement (HDI>0.8) and moderate levels of developement (0.5<HDI<0.7) military expenditures has a significant and negative effect on human developement. This effect is significantly positive for countries with high levels of human developement (0.7<HDI<0.8) including Iran. The effect is insignificant for countries with HDI lower than 0.5.

Keywords

Human Development Index

Military‌‌ Expenditures

Defense Economics

Panel Data