Welfare Gains in the Maritime Domain

This chapter brings together differing experiences of realising welfare gains – in the form of national economic, employment, and technological returns in the maritime domain – arising from government interventions in the defence economies of the UK and Brazil. In the UK case, recent government policies have sought to identify and realise national and regional ‘prosperity’ welfare gains arising from Ministry of Defence (MoD) procurement of warships from its domestic naval shipbuilding sector and to factor these gains into ‘value-for-money’ criteria when contracting with industry. In the Brazilian case, public policies have focused on using naval procurement as a means of acquiring inward technology transfer, and then transferring the knowledge and assets obtained to enhance national and regional maritime clusters through a spillover process. The chapter analyses the development, implementation, and performance of these initiatives in both countries. The conclusions provide insights into how and where national welfare and ‘prosperity’ gains and can be derived from differing context-specific government interventions in the naval shipbuilding sector in the cases of a developed and a developing defence-industrial power.