Education and military rivalry

by

Philippe Aghion, Torsten Persson and Dorothee Rouzet

Abstract

Using data from the last 150 years in a small set of countries, and from the postwar period in a large set of countries, we show that large investments in state primary education systems tend to occur when countries face military rivals or threats from their neighbors. By contrast, we find that democratic transitions are negatively associated with education investments, while the presence of democratic political institutions magnifies the positive effect of military rivalries. These empirical results are robust to a number of statistical concerns and continue to hold when we instrument military rivalries with commodity prices or rivalries in a certain country's immediate neighborhood. We also present historical case studies, as well as a simple model, that are consistent with the econometric evidence.