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Science 28 April 1995:
Vol. 268. no. 5210, pp. 525 - 532
DOI: 10.1126/science.268.5210.525
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Articles

In from the Cold: Prospects for Conversion of the Defense Industrial Base

Maryellen R. Kelley 1 and Todd A. Watkins 2

1 Department of Political Science and the Industrial Performance Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA (on leave from Carnegie Mellon University)
2 Department of Economics, College of Business and Economics, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA 18015, USA.

At the end of the Cold War, the manufacturing operations involved in making military equipment and commercial goods are commonly believed to intersect hardly at all. Our analyses of 1991 survey data from a large sample of establishments in the machining-intensive durable goods sector show that there are few technical and competitive conditions separating the defense and commercial industrial spheres. Commercial-military integration of production is now the normal practice among the majority of defense contractors in this sector. Moreover, we find little difference between defense and commercial producers in the competitive conditions they face or in the diversity of their customers. However, defense contractors have an advantage over their strictly commercial counterparts because of their greater use of productivity-enhancing technologies.


THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
From Mission to Commercial Orientation: Perils and Possibilities for Federal Industrial Technology Policy.
M. R. Kelley (1997)
Economic Development Quarterly 11, 313-328
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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)