Military expenditure economic growth nexus in Jordan: an application of ARDL bound test analysis in the presence of breaks

The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan is a nation that has persisted through turbulent times. The country’s leaders have long attempted to balance the allocation of resources between a strong military and a developing economy in their quest for stability, peace and prosperity. This paper examines the relationship between Jordan’s military expenditure and economic growth during the period 1970-2015 to shed further light. Using cointegration techniques allowing for structural breaks based on Gregory and Hansen (1996), and the ARDL methodology this paper tests the short and long-run equilibrium relationship between military expenditure and economic growth in Jordan. Furthermore, with the error correction model (ECM) and CUSUM and CUSUMSQ tests, we examine the stability of the above relationship. The results show that there is a positive, long-run and short run relationship between military expenditure and economic growth in Jordan during the period under study. This finding has important policy implication to the Jordanian state as it justifies that the transfer of resources to the military has not negatively impacted economic growth.