Military spending data measure key international relations concepts such as balancing, arms races, the distribution of power, and the severity of military burdens. Unfortunately, missing values and measurement error threaten the validity of existing findings. Addressing this challenge, we introduce the Global Military Spending Dataset (GMSD). GMSD collates new and existing expenditure variables from a comprehensive collection of sources, expands data coverage, and employs a latent variable model to estimate missing values and quantify measurement error. We validate the data and present new findings. First, correlations between economic surplus and military spending are currently higher than at any point in the last two-hundred years. Second, updating DiGiuseppe and Poast’s (2018) analysis, we find larger substantive effects. Specifically, we find that the (negative) effect of a democratic ally on military spending is three times larger, and the (positive) effect of an increase in GDP is five times larger than previously estimated.

中文翻译：

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测量军备：介绍全球军费开支数据集

军费开支数据衡量关键的国际关系概念，如平衡、军备竞赛、权力分配和军事负担的严重程度。不幸的是，缺失值和测量误差威胁着现有研究结果的有效性。为了应对这一挑战，我们引入了全球军事支出数据集（GMSD）。GMSD 从全面的来源中整理新的和现有的支出变量，扩大数据覆盖范围，并采用潜在变量模型来估计缺失值并量化测量误差。我们验证数据并提出新的发现。首先，经济盈余与军费开支之间的相关性目前高于过去两百年来的任何时候。其次，更新 DiGiuseppe 和 Poast（2018）的分析，我们发现更大的实质性影响。具体来说，我们发现民主盟友对军费开支的（负面）影响是之前估计的三倍，而GDP增长的（正面）影响是之前估计的五倍。