The Supply of Volunteers to the Armed Forces Revisited
Abstract
The objective of the paper is to re-examine wage and unemployment elasticities of the supply of volunteers to the United States Armed Forces in the absence of the draft. It is shown that earlier studies must be reconsidered due to the omission of a measure of the resources employed in manpower procurement. When a resource variable is included in the supply equation, wage and unemployment elasticities based upon 1970 data are obtained which are substantially lower than those reported earlier. This implies that volunteers may not be as responsive to wage increases as previously assumed, which could make the wage increases to raise an all-volunteer military establishment much greater than anticipated.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Mar 20, 1972
- Accession Number
- AD0740402
Entities
People
- James T. Bennett
- Peter J. Kinn
- Sheldon E. Haber
Organizations
- George Washington University