Random effects meta analysis of military recruiting

The success of the US military recruiting depends not only on recruiting efforts but also on the labor market conditions. This paper reviews the econometric literature that examined the effects of marketing as well as recruiting effort on high quality enlistment contracts in the 1980s. A random-effects meta analysis is used to examine the systematic variation across studies of advertising, recruiter effort, and unemployment rate elasticities. The result of a meta analysis indicates that (1) the estimated effect of unemployment rate on military recruiting does not vary significantly over several military recruiting studies; (2) the average elasticity of high quality contract with respect to unemployment rate is estimated as 0.48; (3) elasticities of high quality contract with respect to advertising and recruiter forces are influenced by individual study characteristics; (4) although the Army recruiter elasticity (0.43) turns out to be higher than advertising elasticity (0.15), Army advertising appears to cost slightly less than recruiter forces on average when an additional contract is needed. However, this cost difference is not significant.