IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/defpea/v30y2019i7p813-829.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Are Economic Upturns Bad for Military Recruitment? A Study on Swedish Regional Data 2011–2015

Author

Listed:
  • Peter Bäckström

Abstract

This paper represents the first effort to explore the relationship between civilian labour market conditions and the supply of labour to the military in the all-volunteer environment that Sweden entered after the abolishment of the peacetime draft in 2010. The paper investigates the effect of civilian unemployment on the rate of applications from individuals aged 18–25 to initiate basic military training, using panel data on Swedish counties for the period 2011–2015. A linear fixed-effects model is estimated to investigate the relationship, while controlling for a range of socio-demographic covariates, unobserved heterogeneity on the regional level, as well as aggregate trends on the national level. The results of the panel-data analysis indicate that the unemployment rate has a positive and statistically significant effect on the application rate. These results are robust to non-linear form specifications, as well as allowing the civilian unemployment rate to be endogenous. As such, the results suggest that the civilian labour market environment in Sweden can give rise to non-trivial fluctuations in the supply of applications to initiate basic military training within the Swedish Armed Forces.

Suggested Citation

  • Peter Bäckström, 2019. "Are Economic Upturns Bad for Military Recruitment? A Study on Swedish Regional Data 2011–2015," Defence and Peace Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(7), pages 813-829, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:defpea:v:30:y:2019:i:7:p:813-829
    DOI: 10.1080/10242694.2018.1522572
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/10242694.2018.1522572
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/10242694.2018.1522572?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:defpea:v:30:y:2019:i:7:p:813-829. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/GDPE20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.