The so-called ‘guns and butter’ phenomenon reflects that Pakistan is experiencing a difficult choice to improve defense and welfare sector to achieve sustainable economic growth. However, results remain controversial. Therefore, this paper attempts to explore the long and short-term associations among military expenditure, human development, and economic growth as informed by both urbanization and food deficit from 1965 to 2016. This study applies a newly-developed econometric model of Quantile Autoregressive Distributive Lag that not only takes asymmetries into account but also captures all conditions simultaneously. Our findings indicate that military expenditure has a negative impact on human development and economic growth, while urbanization and food deficit have a positive effect on it. We also confirm this long and short-run equilibrium by applying the Wald test. Possible economic policy implications - such as improving the quality and quantity of education, a true implementation of the National Rural Support Program, and improving gender equity in the Pakistani economy - are also discussed.

所谓的“大炮和黄油”现象反映了巴基斯坦正在经历改善国防和福利部门以实现可持续经济增长的艰难选择。然而，结果仍然存在争议。因此，本文试图探索从 1965 年到 2016 年城市化和粮食短缺的军事支出、人类发展和经济增长之间的长期和短期关联。本研究应用了新开发的分位数自回归分布计量经济学模型。不仅考虑不对称性而且同时捕获所有条件的滞后。我们的研究结果表明，军费开支对人类发展和经济增长有负面影响，而城市化和粮食短缺对其有积极影响。我们还通过应用 Wald 检验来确认这种长期和短期均衡。还讨论了可能的经济政策影响——例如提高教育质量和数量、真正实施国家农村支持计划以及改善巴基斯坦经济中的性别平等。