Abstract
Most discussions of the volunteer military have concentrated upon either the social costs of conscription or the level of entry pay needed to attract sufficient numbers of volunteers. These studies have neglected the impact of movement toward a volunteer military on the management of the military force as a whole. The central theme of this paper is that many of the largest personnel problems are exacerbated, if not caused by, the incentive system. Many of these incentives—incorporated in the pay and retirement structure and the training and utilization patterns for personnel—were developed for historic reasons that are no longer applicable. With the introduction of a volunteer military, mistakes in the personnel system become more costly. Adjustment of the most perverse incentives could lead to a self-correction of many glaring problems.
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This paper is an expanded version of a paper written with William W. Hogan, “Implications of Paying for What You Get,” which was presented at the Second Interservice Defense Policy Conference U.S. Air Force Academy, March 1973. That paper, written while we were both in the Air Force and members of the Air Force Academy faculty, led to our dismissal from the faculty and a subsequent year and a half period of truly bizarre occurrences while we were still in the Air Force. A partial account of the history behind this paper can be found in Seymour M. Hersh, “Two Ousted Teachers Say Air Force Stifles Academic Freedom,”The New York Times, July 16, 1974.
Besides the important inputs to this analysis by William Hogan, this paper also benefitted from helpful comments and data supplied by James Marlin, Jr. Any deficiencies remain my responsibility, however.
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Hanushek, E.A. The volunteer military and the rest of the iceberg. Policy Sci 8, 343–361 (1977). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01719639
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01719639