Current Projects
EPS undertakes projects of research, education, and outreach within our three program areas:
US Military and Security Policy
Because US military expenditures exceed that of the rest of the world combined, one area of focus is the security and economic policies of the world’s only (current) superpower. Within this program area we look at such issues as: the true cost of war; what can realistically be achieved by military means; defining a new framework to reduce the cost and increase the effectiveness of US security; looking for ways to reduce the threat of irresponsible nuclear policy; and, strategies for achieving peace and homeland security.
International Peacebuilding
Cooperation is a common sense tool to get things done. It's real people, in government and out, working together on issues that matter to our daily lives. Many issues we face are bigger than any one nation — even the United States: finding terrorists anywhere they hide; stopping killer germs before they reach our shores; making the global economy work for everyone. Working with other countries and international institutions like the UN multiplies our strength, expands our options, and distributes our costs and risks.
Teaching the Economics of War and Peace
At present, even within defense and security institutions, virtually no training opportunities exist in this field, no possibilities for students, security personnel, the NGO community, or other interested parties to receive an informed overview of the economic causes and consequences of defense expenditure, how economic theory helps illuminate, formulate, and evaluate policy options.
Here, we integrate the study of economic dimensions into the study of war and peace (for example, in international relations), and the study of war into the study of economic systems (for example, the arms trade in international trade & finance; defense spending in macroeconomic management). Our goal is not to dictate how economists teach these topics, but to encourage creative work in these areas.
We decide to undertake a new project if:
It employs the tools of economic analysis;
It strengthens understanding of our issues of concern among more than one audience;
It proposes rational and peaceful alternatives to current mores, policies, or practices.
Please contact us if you have ideas for projects we should undertake.
Explore our current projects:
Cost of War
Coming soon
Conflict & Development
Conflict or Development?
Written in clear English, with informative maps, tables, and graphs, this volume is designed to inform the debate among policymakers, activists, journalists, academics, students, and citizens worldwide.
Conflict or Development? has a further regional focus on Africa. Joseph Stiglitz discusses the role of information in conflict and draws a fascinating analogy between civil strife and a labor strike. Paul Collier and Neil Cooper take different positions on the prospects for reforming war economies, and E. Wayne Nafziger gives details of the evolution of humanitarian emergencies. In the two country studies, Tilman Brück examines the destruction and reconstruction of Mozambique, and Manuel Ferreira discusses the civil war in Angola. Paul Dunne tells the story of South Africa's defense contractor Denel from its origins under apartheid until today, and David Gold describes the context and history of the current actions against conflict diamonds. In the chapter on "Trends in World Military Expenditure," Jurgen Brauer reflects on the weight imposed by the world's military burden.
The entire text of this book became the first issue of the Economics of Peace and Security Journal. It is now freely available to the public.
Disarmament and Development
Proceedings from a 1998 UN symposium, with articles by Lawrence Klein, Michael Intriligator, and Jayantha Dhanapala, among others, available here.
Inequality & Democracy
University of Texas Inequality Project (UTIP)
The University of Texas Inequality Project (UTIP) is a small research group concerned with measuring and explaining movements of inequality in wages and earnings and patterns of industrial change around the world.
UTIP produces data sets on pay inequality at the global level, at the national level including for Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, China, India, and Russia, and at the regional level for Europe. We have also used pay inequality as an instrument to estimate measures of household income inequality, for a large panel of countries from 1963 through 1999. This new global data set has nearly 3,200 country-year observations. All data sets are available in the data section.
UTIP receives financial support mainly from the Lloyd M. Bentsen Jr. Chair in Business/Government Relations at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin. We have received past support from the Ford Foundation and from the Carnegie Scholars Program. UTIP works in association with Economists for Peace and Security and the Levy Economics Institute.
Recent Work
UTIP held an event on January 3, 2015 at the AEA/ASSA meeting with James K. Galbraith, Olivier Giovannoni, Branko Milanovic, Stephen Rose, and Joseph Stiglitz. See more details about the event.
The September 2012 EPS Quarterly issue focused on inequality.