Policy Components of Arms Competition

American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 27, No. 3, pp. 385-406, August 1983

12 Pages Posted: 23 Jul 2007

See all articles by Mathew D. McCubbins

Mathew D. McCubbins

Department of Political Science and Law School, Duke University (deceased)

Abstract

This report suggests and justifies a simple approach to arms competitions, wherein arms competitions are viewed as disaggregated competition between pairs of weapons systems for executing mutually incompatible policy goals. This approach is derived from a decision theoretic model of armament choice, in which military decision makers make trade-offs between alternative strategies of weapons deployment to achieve national foreign policy objectives. Data representing a cross section of the U.S. and USSR military arsenals are employed in a quasi first-difference two-stage least squared analysis to provide evidence for the propositions of the model and this approach.

Keywords: arms, arms competition, armament choice, foreign policy, United States, USSR

JEL Classification: C31, C70, D78, H56

Suggested Citation

McCubbins, Mathew D., Policy Components of Arms Competition. American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 27, No. 3, pp. 385-406, August 1983 , Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1002402

Mathew D. McCubbins (Contact Author)

Department of Political Science and Law School, Duke University (deceased)

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