This paper contributes to the literature on military spending by analyzing the relationship between military spending and income inequality in a panel of transition economies over the period 1990-2015. In particular, we exploit three different measures of military expenditures: (i) the military spending in absolute terms; (ii) the military expenditures per capita; (iii) the military burden, namely the ratio between military expenditure and GDP. Findings highlight a positive relationship between military expenditures and income inequality captured by means of three different measures of inequality. Results are also confirmed after we performed a variety of robustness tests. However, other results are worth noting and contradictory. For example military conscription appears to have a redistributional effect and when considering a non-linearity the results show that there could be a concave relationship between military spending and income inequality. In addition, when testing for the 'crowding-out argument' results show that expenditures for subsidies are negatively influenced by military spending so confirming the crowding-out argument but there is no significant evidence when considering education and health expenditures.

This paper explores the demand-pull, technology-push and regulation factors influencing the environmental innovation strategies. We focus on a subset of manufacturing firms of a group of European Transition Countries. The data available to investigate the driving factors that lead to eco-innovate are taken from the Community Innovation Survey data (CIS 2014). The data is a cross-section covering the three-year period between 2012 and 2014. We employ a multivariate probit model to observe the effect of several drivers on eco-innovation, captured by means of different measures. Empirical findings highlight that: (i) some drivers are common to some types of eco-innovation; (ii) regulation does have a positive impact on all drivers. The latter provides a clear-cut implication for policy-making. Broadly speaking, in transition economies public policies and invectives appear to trigger environmental innovation much more than demand-pull factors.

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This paper investigates the sources of the possible gender ownership gap in innovativeness in a set of Transition economies by means of firm-level data coming from the Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey (BEEPS V) conducted in 2012–2014. Through the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition we highlight the factors explaining the differences in the propensity to innovate between female-owned and male-owned firms. We find that the innovation disparity between firms with females among their owners and those having only male owners is mainly due to the differences in endowment effects. Tangible and intangible assets affect the innovation gap between the two groups of firms.

This paper investigates the impact of militarization on income inequality. The analysis is conducted on a panel of 40 European countries over the period 2000–2017. The degree of militarization of a country is captured by means of the Global Militarization Index (GMI) and we employ the Gini index as a measure of inequality. The main findings show that militarization and inequality are positively associated. The findings appear to be robust. We also consider control variables related to military commitment, namely (i) conscription; (ii) NATO membership; (iii) involvement in an armed conflict. Interestingly conscription appears to be negatively associated with income inequality whereas an armed conflict and NATO membership show the opposite sign. For sake of robustness, we undertake the same estimations on alternative samples of countries and results are confirmed. Eventually, to deal with the issue of endogeneity, we apply the Lewbel, IV–GMM approach and results are confirmed.

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