We examine the practice of military conscription around the world from the perspective of two standard theories as well as a new one, which emphasizes the fixed cost of introducing and administering the draft as a deterrent to its use. We find that, holding the relative size of the military constant, higher population countries are more likely to use the draft. We also find that French legal origin countries, which we see as facing lower fixed and variable administrative costs, are more likely to draft than are common-law countries. Conscription does not seem to be influenced by democracy and is influenced by the deadweight costs of taxation only in countries with very large militaries. The results suggest that fixed costs of introducing and administering new regulations may be an important determinant of their use. Copyright 2005, Oxford University Press.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
Contact details of provider: Postal: Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK Fax: 01865 267 985 Email: Web page: http://www.aler.oupjournals.org/
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Simeon Djankov & Rafael La Porta & Florencio Lopez-de-Silane & Andrei Shleifer & Juan Botero, 2003.
"The Regulation of Labor,"
NBER Working Papers
9756, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Other versions:
Simeon Djankov & Rafael La Porta & Florencio LopezdeSilanes & Andrei Shleifer, 2000.
"The Regulation of Entry,"
NBER Working Papers
7892, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Other versions:
Djankov, Simeon & La Porta, Rafael & Lopez-de-Silanes, Florencio & Shleifer, Andrei, 2001.
"The Regulation of Entry,"
Working Paper Series
rwp01-015, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
[Downloadable!]
Kevin Murphy & Andrei Shleifer, 2004.
"Persuasion in Politics,"
NBER Working Papers
10248, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Other versions:
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)