Measuring Arms: Introducing the Global Military Spending Dataset

Abstract

Military spending data measure key international relations concepts such as balancing, arms races, the distribution of power, and the severity of military burdens. Unfortunately, missing values and measurement error threaten the validity of existing findings. Addressing this challenge, we introduce the Global Military Spending Dataset (GMSD). GMSD collates new and existing expenditure variables from a comprehensive collection of sources, expands data coverage, and employs a latent variable model to estimate missing values and quantify measurement error. We validate the data and present new findings. First, correlations between economic surplus and military spending are currently higher than at any point in the last two-hundred years. Second, updating DiGiuseppe and Poast’s (2018) analysis, we find larger substantive effects. Specifically, we find that the (negative) effect of a democratic ally on military spending is three times larger, and the (positive) effect of an increase in GDP is five times larger than previously estimated.