Investigating factors affecting military spending in selected countries of the Middle East: Examining the hypothesis of military competition

The Middle East is one of the most turbulent and tense regions in the world, which has been the site of many tensions at the national and international level since the past due to political, social, economic factors and abundant energy resources. Among the variables that have always been growing in the Middle East countries in recent decades- especially the oil countries, is defense spending, which has been affected by various factors. Examining the factors affecting defense spending in the Middle East countries will have broad policy implications for the countries-of this region and can be very useful. Therefore, the purpose of this article was.to investigate.factors affecting the demand function of military expenditures in the Middle East countries during the period of 1980-2019 with the quantile regression approach. The results of this study showed that GDP, oil price, foreign trade had.a.positive effect and civilian spending had a positive effect on foreign defense. Also, the military expenditures of other countries have had a positive and significant impact-on the-military expenditures of each country, which means.confirming the hypothesis of military.competition in the studied countries. Based on the other results of this study, the.effect of the effective factors on defense-spending in the studied.countries.was symmetrical.