Financialization and Militarization: an Empirical Investigation

Abstract

Based on Arrighi, we empirically investigate whether financialization and militarization are mutually reinforcing phenomena in the United States. Military spending during the 1950–1960s in the United States counteracted the stagnation of the monopolistic stage of capitalism. Monopoly capital was transformed into finance monopoly capital as the intensity of financial capital increased during the late 1970s in response to stagnation. Considering alternative financialization variables and the profit rate in the financial sector, and using several parametric and nonparametric methods, we found a significant relationship between financialization and militarization in the United States for 1949–2019. The results suggest that the rise in financialization is parallel to the decline in the profit rates, leading to larger military expenditure in total, but with relatively smaller share in GDP. JEL Classification: C14, E11, G32 © 2023 Union for Radical Political Economics.