Speaker
Description
How does the adoption of new military technologies affect the allocation of defense budgetary resources to capital and labor, respectively? There is a vast literature on causes and effects of the “labor share” in wider economies, but no work has yet tested the effects of technology adaptation on the allocation of defense budgets to their different components: equipment, personnel, operating & maintenance (O&M), and infrastructure. Using a newly available dataset on military technology adoption and a purpose-built dataset disaggregating defense budgets for 35 countries in Europe and North America over as many as 50 years, we find that as militaries become more technologically advanced, the “labor share” of defense budgets declines, in favor of equipment’s share of those budgets – O&M and infrastructure are unaffected. This finding has important policy implications – militaries are already less labor intensive than wider national economies, and as labor share continues to decline in favor of capital, they may find themselves increasingly subject to “Augustine’s Law” - where a small number of technologically advanced, yet prohibitively expensive, systems consume an ever-growing share of the defense budget.
| If you are submitting an Open Panel proposal, have you included all four abstracts in attachment? | Yes, I have included all required information (see below). |
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| Would you like to be considered for travel funding through the NetSec COST Action? | Yes |
| Are you a member of the NetSec Management Committee? | No |
| What discipline or branch of humanities or social sciences do you identify yourself with? | Political Science |
| Which of the following best describes your stage of the career? | Assistant Professor |
| In which country is your home institution? | United States |
| What is your gender? | Male |