Data & Proposed Methodology
The study will use time series data from SIPRI on military expenditure, which is complete for South Africa dating back to 1951. This will be combined with data from the World Bank, to include social and economic indicators. The time period of interest will be from 1960 to 2019. The proposed approach is to implement a general demand equation for military spending. This was proposed and implemented by Smith (1989) and is based on neoclassical assumptions. Furthermore, this model allows fora country-specific analysis, which has empirically performed well. The demand function will be specified to account for various country specific factors, such as the approaches of Batchelor, Dunne and Lamb (2002), Nikolaidou (2008) and
Oladotun (2019). This allows fora more comprehensive approach to variable inclusion and, potentially, abetter understanding of the determinants of military expenditure in the South African context.
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