2006 Defense Economics Conference: The Defense Department's Future in a Changing Macroeconomic Environment. Held in Alexandria, Virginia on September 21, 2006

Abstract

The interaction of defense and the economy was a hot topic of public debate during the first Reagan administration, roughly 1981 through 1984. There was a fair consensus then that defense spending needed to increase. The magnitude of the increase was very controversial, however. We in PA&E [at the time] thought of the issue as a particular instance of the classic question asked in defense programming: How much is enough? Framed this way, the discussion includes both the cost of defense and the value of insurance against threats purchased by those costs. But a large fraction of the public debate at this time was concerned only with the economic consequences of higher defense spending, and obscured rather than illuminated the controlling question of how much defense the United States should buy. The arguments offered on the economic effects of higher defense spending generally were of little of no intellectual merit. They were of concern to the senior DOD leadership, however, because they could influence the degree of public support for the increased defense spending that the administration favored. So the Defense Department's small economic staff occupied itself trying to demonstrate simply, directly, and intuitively why the economic arguments that were being made were not deserving of any place in the public debate. These and other similar efforts resulted in a remarkable degree of consensus that arguments about the economic effects of higher defense spending in fact did not deserve a place in the public debate. The economic arguments that had been commonplace during the preceding few years had faded from the public discussion by late 1985.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 01, 2007
Accession Number
ADA471754

Entities

People

  • Ayeh Bandeh-ahmadi
  • Jerry Pannullo
  • John E. Whitley
  • Linda S. Garler
  • Scott W. Gannon
  • Soyong Chong
  • Stanley A. Horowitz

Organizations

  • Institute for Defense Analyses

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical
  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Space

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Business Administration
  • Congress
  • Cost Analysis
  • Demography
  • Employment
  • Globalization
  • Health Services
  • Investments
  • Management Personnel
  • National Governments
  • National Politics
  • National Security
  • Organizational Structure
  • Personnel Management
  • Political Systems
  • Public Administration
  • United States Government

Readers

  • Educational Psychology
  • Government Contracting/Procurement.
  • Military History of the United States in the 20th Century.