Unpublished Paper
Military Installations as Regional Economic Anchor Institutions
version prepared for North American meetings of the Regional Science Association International
(2014)
Abstract
Military bases both provide significant benefits and impose distinctive costs upon the regions
that host them. The evaluation of the local economic impacts of military installations takes on
importance due to federal mandates to expand, contract, or adjust base staffing levels and
contracting activities. For many military regions, particularly those located in smaller urban and
non-urban areas, the military sector constitutes a critical economic anchor, influencing local
economic structure and stability via its size, interactions with the rest of the local economy, and
shaping of area culture. Yet military bases often are accompanied by state or local government
facilities, universities or colleges, hospitals, prisons, or Veterans’ Administration centers,
complementary anchors that may substitute for or otherwise condition the economic effects of
military installations.
We examine whether regions hosting major military facilities were insulated from the
economic downturn of the 2007-2009 recession and subsequent slow recovery. We adopt a
quasi-experimental approach, pairing counties containing military installations with otherwise
similar counties lacking an extensive military presence. We also consider and control for
endowments of other types of anchor institutions. Our approach separates the effects of military
from non-military anchor institutions and provides the first test of the impact of military anchors
on regional economic performance during and immediately following a major recession.
Keywords
- resiliency,
- military,
- defense,
- anchor institution,
- recession,
- economic development
Disciplines
Publication Date
2014
Citation Information
Joshua Drucker and Marc Doussard. "Military Installations as Regional Economic Anchor Institutions" version prepared for North American meetings of the Regional Science Association International (2014) Available at: http://works.bepress.com/jdrucker/37/