The economic theory of a military draft reconsidered*

Abstract

During the debate over conscription in the United States over 20 years ago, most economists argued that a volunteer force was unequivocally more efficient than a draft force. But Dwight Lee and Richard McKenzie recently demonstrated that under certain conditions conscription will be more efficient. However, Lee and McKenzie omitted some important determinants of the relative efficiency of a volunteer system from their analysis. Using their framework as a starting point, this paper develops a more comprehensive model of optimal military manpower procurement system choice. The key findings are that (1) productivity considerations tend to make the volunteer force the more efficient force and recent trends in technology have arguably accentuated this tendency but (2) the larger is the level, and the elasticity, of demand for defense, the more likely the draft is to be the optimal procurement method.

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