IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ces/ceswps/_12469.html

Guns and Butter: The Fiscal Consequences of Rearmament and War

Author

Listed:
  • Johannes Marzian
  • Christoph Trebesch

Abstract

We study the fiscal consequences of large military buildups. To do so, we assemble the Global Budget Database, a comprehensive dataset of disaggregated central government finances for 20 countries from 1870 to 2022. We identify 114 episodes of military spending booms, in peace and war, and analyze their financing and long-term fiscal legacy. Consistent with theory, wartime booms are financed primarily through debt, while peacetime booms rely on a more balanced mix of debt and taxes. In contrast to the classic notion of “guns versus butter,” we find little evidence that social spending is cut during military expansions. Instead, when societies rearm, they tend to choose guns and butter, resulting in higher debt, expenditures, and taxes. Debt rises and later falls, but tax rates and tax revenues remain elevated for 15 years or more. Large geopolitical shocks, in war and peace, result in higher taxes and a lasting fiscal expansion.

Suggested Citation

  • Johannes Marzian & Christoph Trebesch, 2026. "Guns and Butter: The Fiscal Consequences of Rearmament and War," CESifo Working Paper Series 12469, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12469
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.ifo.de/DocDL/cesifo1_wp12469.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Boullot, Mathieu & Cahn, Christophe & Challe, Edouard & Matheron, Julien, 2026. "Aggregate and Distributional Implications of a Military Buildup," CEPR Discussion Papers 21270, Centre for Economic Policy Research.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • E62 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Fiscal Policy; Modern Monetary Theory
    • H20 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - General
    • H61 - Public Economics - - National Budget, Deficit, and Debt - - - Budget; Budget Systems
    • H87 - Public Economics - - Miscellaneous Issues - - - International Fiscal Issues; International Public Goods
    • N10 - Economic History - - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Industrial Structure; Growth; Fluctuations - - - General, International, or Comparative
    • N40 - Economic History - - Government, War, Law, International Relations, and Regulation - - - General, International, or Comparative

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:ces:ceswps:_12469. 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: Klaus Wohlrabe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cesifde.html .

    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.