Military expenditure forecasting methods (Economics of European defense industry)

This dissertation firstly examines literature connected to this topic in chapter 2. Secondly, chapter 3 summarizes necessary methodology and data used throughout the dissertation. Thirdly, it compares the results of military expenditure made by Cobb-Douglas-Solow production function forecast and an Auto regressive model, in chapter 4. Fourthly, in the chapter 5, with a better performing model, it forecasters the military expenditure from 2015 to 2024 for France, Germany, UK and Italy, because they represent more than 65% of European military expenditure and should give us an idea about the course of the European expenditure as a whole. Also, it compares forecasted expenditure of European NATO countries and USA with Canada for the same period. Finally, in chapter 6, we examine whether there is Granger causality between MS and GDP. Simply, if MS Granger causes GDP and vice versa. It was found that AR is a better performing forecasting technique than CDS and that Granger causality results are ambiguous. GDP Granger causes MS only for France and Italy and there is no evidence of opposite causality.