Comments on: The Big Arms Traders

By: stubbornmule

stubbornmule — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 03:29:41 +0000

Tarkin: you make a good point. Perhaps the easiest thing to look at would be GDP-weighted trade in arms…could be the subject of a future post.

By: Tarkin

Tarkin — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 02:45:55 +0000

That was an interesting post. The dollar value may be less important depending on where it is used. It’d be interesting to compare these figures weighted for the technological/industrial scale of the locations. In and ood way it reminds me a bit of the comparison between a billionaire giving away a million dollars vs a blue collar worker donating a thousand. The value in itself doesn’t tell the whole story.

By: Where Have the Fish Come From? | A Stubborn Mule's Perspective

Where Have the Fish Come From? | A Stubborn Mule's Perspective — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 04:20:22 +0000

[...] reading my posts on the international arms trade, a friend thought I might be interested in some data on the international trade in fish. While I [...]

By: stubbornmule

stubbornmule — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 04:28:08 +0000

Tarkin: interesting question. I'd say you are right that the distribution of imports and exports reflects what you would expect to see in a efficient global trading economy. As to whether it leads or lags other trade, that's a good question. I'll have to give some though to other trade data that could be used for this analysis. In case you didn't see it, you may also find this comment on the previous arms post of interest.

By: Tarkin

Tarkin — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 01:26:09 +0000

Interesting data. It has me wondering whether spend on arms is more useful as an understanding of policy than actual arms transfers. After all each nation is going to have some sort of military, but as with normal economic specialisation each country isn’t necessarily going to produce its own equipment. I suppose the word cloud for exporting shows that specialisation is quite important for arms manufacturing.
It’d also be interesting to see whether arms transfers were at the forefront of globalisation or trailed other goods.

By: stubbornmule

stubbornmule — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 18:27:20 +0000

dan: There's no doubt that aggregating the arms trades from 1980 to 2008 hides the variation over time and you've picked two excellent examples where that variation is significant. This chart shows that Iraq essentially accrued all of its total during the Iran-Iraq war. While this one shows that much of Germany's total is due to East Germany prior to reunification.

By: dan

dan — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 12:23:59 +0000

interested to know if iraq racked up their tally before or after saddam. or if it was just a consistent effort? and what about those germans? how did sipri count their purchasers when they were still operating separate bank accounts?