Convergence of Military Expenditure per Capita in NATO Countries: Evidence from Nahar-Inder Convergence Tests

Abstract

It is seen that the burden sharing debates between NATO member countries have come to the fore at various periods and with different intensities, depending on the changes in the international arena, from the post-cold war era to the present. In this context, studies investigating the convergence behavior for military spending levels of NATO member countries occupy an important place in the relevant empirical literature. In this study, the existence of stochastic convergence in terms of military expenditures per capita in NATO countries in the period covering the years 1960-2020 is investigated using the Nahar-Inder (2002) convergence test approach. Nahar and Inder (2002) convergence test is expressed as a polynomial type test that allows to determine countries that act differently in a sample with the same behavior in general. Nahar-Inder (2002) convergence test also shows that output differences may exhibit convergence behavior even if the series under consideration are not stationary. In this study, the findings obtained by using the Nahar-Inder (2002) test, which is based on time series analysis, which allows to decompose intra-sample mobility, show that 13 countries in the sample, except Belgium, Portugal and Norway, converge towards the sample mean.