Commissioned by The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
The Government’s National Security Strategy (NSS) and Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR), introduced ‘Promoting our Prosperity’ as a national security objective. This included commitments to refresh defence industrial policy as one of a number of measures to help the UK’s defence industry grow and compete successfully, to drive greater innovation in defence procurement, and to ensure that future investment decisions contribute to a more dynamic and productive economy. To support this work BIS identified a need to better understand the contribution that the defence sector currently makes to the UK economy and commissioned this project to refresh, and develop further, the evidence base to support the UK government in assessing the costs and benefits of investment decisions in defence. A particular focus of the project was on identifying the wage premium associated with skilled jobs in the UK defence sector in comparison with jobs requiring the same skills in other sectors. For this purpose an experimental approach (e.g. Propensity Score Matching) was employed.
