Series

World Military Expenditures and Arms Transfers [Trade] Series

A major purpose of this data series was to determine worldwide and regional annual totals of military spending and to provide a basis for comparison with other economic information. The series supplies data on member countries of the United Nations as well as members of regional alliances or organizations such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the former Warsaw Pact, the World Bank, and members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). The data for the series were originally collected by the United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. The original Agency publications were transposed to yield the time series data collections. Information in earlier publications was updated in subsequent collections. In earlier files, the unit of analysis was the country-year, but later files also added country as a unit of analysis. The standard three-digit numeric country code developed by Bruce M. Russett, David J. Singer, and Melvin Small, and a three-character alphabetic country code used by Charles McClelland in the World Events Interaction Survey project were assigned to each country in the data files.