Browsing by Author "Elveren, Adem Yavuz"

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Galbraith’s Social Imbalance and Human Security
(Routledge Journals, Taylor & Francis Ltd, 2026) Elveren, Adem Yavuz
This paper revisits John Kenneth Galbraith's theory of social balance and evaluates its implications for human security. Using a panel data of 120 countries over 1990-2020, the paper proxies social balance by the public-to-private spending ratio and measures human security with the Human Security Index (HSI) and its two pillars, freedom from want (HSIW) and freedom from fear (HSIF). Country fixed-effects estimations show a robust inverse-U: human security rises as the public share increases from low levels but declines once the state becomes dominant. Democracy, openness, and tax capacity are positively associated with HSI, while militarization has a negative effect. Decomposition reveals that the aggregate pattern is driven chiefly by HSIW, whereas HSIF is more sensitive to democracy and military spending. The findings support a Galbraithian view that human security is maximized at moderate public shares in accountable, non-militarized settings.
Military Spending and Growth: Empirical Evidence from a Post-Keynesian Model
(Taylor & Francis Ltd, 2025) Elveren, Adem Yavuz; Tongur, Unal; Elgin, Ceyhun
This paper revisits the military spending - economic growth nexus by introducing a simple Post-Keynesian model that accounts for both the direct and indirect effects of military expenditure, specifically through the channel of income inequality. A simulation analysis distinguishes between different types of military expenditures, showing that military wages are less harmful - and can even be beneficial - compared to arms purchases, which exacerbate inequality and diminish growth. Decomposition analysis reveals that even when the direct effect of military spending is mildly positive, the inequality-induced indirect effect is strongly negative, resulting in an overall negative impact on growth. Furthermore, using panel data from 150 countries for 1960-2019 and applying Seemingly Unrelated Regression (SUR) methods, we find that military spending negatively impacts economic growth both directly and indirectly by increasing income inequality. Our findings underline the importance of considering the composition of military expenditures and the mediating role of inequality in evaluating defense spending's macroeconomic consequences.