Identification of Security and Defense Indicators and Their Impact on the Economic Growth of Selected Countries and Providing Policy Recommendations for the Islamic Republic of Iran

Sustainable and high economic growth has always been one of the most important development indicators of countries and its achievement is considered to be the most important economic goal of the states. As a result, identifying the factors influencing economic growth and using these factors as a means to achieve high growth rate, is so interesting for researchers and its results are important for policy makers. On the other hand, security and defensive power are also important indicators of welfare in different of economic, social and cultural aspects of life. This study aims to achieve a balance between these two goals and examine their relationship. The main questions of this study are the relationship between economic growth and security and defensive power. Is this relationship different among different countries? In this regard, after examining the indicators, military expenditures to GDP ratio is used as a proxy for security and defensive power. This research divides countries into two groups of major exporter and importer of military equipment and uses panel data regression analysis to estimate the model using Eviews software. The research has used data of 28 countries during 2005 and 2015. Results show that the increased military spending will lead to an increase in economic growth in exporting countries of military equipment, although leading to a decline in economic growth in the importing countries of military equipment