It has sometimes been argued that US government's' consistent financial support for procurement are research and development in defence could be viewed as a form of industrial policy, not least because of the purported knock-on effects of growth in the defence sector for technological up to a certain level of military build-up, however; there is some evidence that 'increased levels of military expenditures dampen investment, which reduces growth'; this is because they can ' crowd out' investment which in turn, 'may have a dampening effect on growth' (Mintz and Huang, 1991:741). Defence industries are also heavily reliant on highly-skilled workers and, again,it has been suggested that this has led to shortages of these workers in some nations (see Ram (1995),for a review).