Warfare vs. Welfare Finance: Assessing the Effect of Military Expenditure on Out of Pocket Healthcare Financing for NATO Countries — Oak Academic Publishing
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Warfare vs. Welfare Finance: Assessing the Effect of Military Expenditure on Out of Pocket Healthcare Financing for NATO Countries
National Organization for the Provision of Health Services (NOPHS-EOPYY), Heraklion Regional Division, Marousi, Greece
,
Hellenic Mediterranean University, Department of Accounting and Finance, Laboratory of Accounting and Financial Management (LaFIM). Heraklion, Greece
1 National Organization for the Provision of Health Services (NOPHS-EOPYY), Heraklion Regional Division, Marousi, Greece
2 Hellenic Mediterranean University, Department of Accounting and Finance, Laboratory of Accounting and Financial Management (LaFIM). Heraklion, Greece
In the aftermath of the full-scale Russian invasion in Ukraine in 2022, the European political climate displays to fundamentally be transformed. The majority of European allies of NATO, committed to proceed on momentous increases in military spending to contain potential external threats, by abandoning their exclusive focus on economy, trade and welfare policies of a long-lasting period of peace on the continent. Despite the important findings emerging from the health financing and defence economics empirical literature, there is a limited scholarly consensus on the direct impact of military spending on the main pillar of private health financing for several countries. In this context, the aim of this paper is to empirically investigate the direct impact of military expenditure on out of pocket (OOP) healthcare financing, by using a panel data of the vast majority of NATO countries from 2000 to 2021 and applying the Generalized Method of Moment s (GMM) estimator. After a series of several econometric tests and robustness checks that had been applied, the findings of this study show that military re-armaments positively affect OOP healthcare financing in the NATO Alliance. On the foreground of a new European political economy scenery with an unprecedented military spending impetus becoming the norm in several countries, this study enriches the literature, as well it provides useful insights to policy-makers that strong commitments for sharp increases in military spending inevitably confine social and welfare policies.
KeywordsOOP Healthcare FinancingMilitary ExpenditureCrowding-OutDynamic Panel Data AnalysisNATO
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