TITLE: EXPLORING THE DYNAMICS OF DEFENSE EXPENDITURE AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT: A BIBLIOMETRIC ANALYSIS

This study used bibliometric analysis to derive meaningful insights from the literature related to the field of defense expenditure and economic development. The analysis covered 381 documents published across a range of journals from 1991-2021. The Scopus database and the bibliometric R package (R studio) were utilized to identify prominent journals, authors, countries, articles, and themes in the area under study. The study's findings revealed a noticeable increase in publications and citations over the years, indicating a positive yearly growth rate of 2.16%. Among the 161 journals examined, Defence and Peace Economics was found to be the most impactful, with 99 published articles, 1,743 citations, an h-index of 25, and a g-index of 34. Moreover, Dunne JP published the most papers, consistently remained the most cited author, and continued to be the most influential author, with an h-index of 12. The USA, China, and Greece produced the highest number of articles, while the collaborative networks of countries were divided into four major clusters, with researchers from the USA collaborating the most with researchers from other countries and the University of Cape Town and COMSATS Institute of Information Technology collaborating the most with other universities.