Faculty Research Fellow Heidi Peltier Discusses Costs of War Project on “You Don’t Have to Yell” Podcast

Heidi Peltier, Research Professor at the BU Department of Political Science and a Pardee Center Faculty Research Fellow, recently appeared on the “You Don’t Have to Yell” podcast to discuss a recent paper she published exploring the opportunity costs of not investing military spending in other areas of the economy.

“While defense spending does create jobs, there are other areas that are economically important, or politically important, or important for various reasons that actually create more jobs,” Peltier says. “We looked at areas like clean energy, education, infrastructure, health care, and we asked the question, ‘If we spend the same amount of money in those areas that we do in defense, what would that do for jobs?’ The short answer to that is we get more jobs in all those areas than we do in defense.”

Prof. Peltier is Director of the Costs of War project’s “20 Years of War” research series at the Pardee Center, in collaboration with Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. The ongoing Costs of War project at the Watson Institute has explored the human, financial, environmental, social, and political costs of the post-9/11 wars. The two-year “20 Years of War” series based at the Pardee Center will produce a new set of analyses to mark the 20th anniversary of the beginning of the post-9/11 wars.

Listen to the full episode below.