IESET.
Hypotheses·growth·canada_gdp_per_capita_stagnation_post_2015

Canadian GDP per capita (PPP, constant international dollars) diverged negatively from a donor pool of resource-plus-advanced-anglophone-plus- small-open-developed economies (USA, AUS, NZL, GBR, NOR, CHE) starting around 2015, such that the Canadian per-capita trajectory 2015-2023 is materially below a country-and-year-fixed-effect counterfactual matched on pre-2015 level and covariates.

The claim is narrowly about per-capita output trajectory; it does not assert that aggregate GDP fell (it did not) nor that Canadian headline growth was bad in every year. It asserts that per-capita productivity growth under the 2015-present policy mix was slow enough, and population growth fast enough, that the per-capita level has stagnated relative to the donor pool — consistent with the productivity-gap warning issued by Bank of Canada Senior Deputy Governor Rogers in March 2024 ("it's an emergency").

PARTIALengine/runs/canada_gdp_per_capita_stagnation_post_2015

PARTIAL — coef=+0.0162, p=0.2 (above α=0.1); direction inconclusive

confidence cueThe result is useful, but not decisive. Treat it as a clue, not a settled conclusion.

policy briefMixed or noisy

In ordinary language

Over a long period, do more market-oriented institutions translate into higher income or productivity, once the comparison looks beyond a single success story?

plain answer

The evidence is suggestive but not decisive. coef=+0.0162, p=0.2 (above α=0.1); direction inconclusive

why it matters

Growth claims can look convincing in single success stories. This test asks whether the pattern survives a broader comparison.

how the test works

It compares 7 country or place units from 2000 to 2023, using a panel fe design, with fixed effects for country and year.

what was measured
What changed
  • Canada post 2015
What we checked
  • Log income pc cost-of-living adjusted constant
  • Log income pc constant lcu
what this does not prove

A single test is not the whole truth. It narrows the claim under a specific sample, time period, and method. Strong policy conclusions need the pattern to survive nearby tests, alternative data, and serious objections.

verification

5 input datasets, 0 unresolved missing series, provenance status: partial provenance.

Results

engine/runs/canada_gdp_per_capita_stagnation_post_2015
Loading chart…

Who has skin in the game — schools predicting on this

17 schools list this hypothesis as a test of their position. The chips below are school-level scoreboard outcomes, not a second hypothesis verdict.

hypothesis verdict vs scoreboard outcome

The banner verdict judges this hypothesis as written. The scoreboard asks whether each school's polarity-corrected prediction was right. Raw status is not a school win: SUPPORTED supports schools that needed SUPPORTED, but refutes schools that needed REFUTED.

Austrian Business Cycle Theory (ABCT)wins if SUPPORTEDpartial/no-callChicago School Monetarismwins if SUPPORTEDpartial/no-callClassical Liberalwins if SUPPORTEDpartial/no-callDegrowth / Ecological Macroeconomicswins if REFUTEDpartial/no-callDemocratic Socialism (Bernsteinian revisionism + modern)wins if REFUTEDpartial/no-callStructuralist / Developmentalistwins if MIXEDpartial/no-callEco-Socialism / Red-Greenwins if REFUTEDpartial/no-callEmpirical Pragmatist (the framework's house position)wins if MIXEDpartial/no-callNew Institutional Economicswins if MIXEDpartial/no-callMarket Socialism (Lange-Lerner tradition)wins if REFUTEDpartial/no-callMarxian Political Economywins if REFUTEDpartial/no-callMarxism-Leninism (central-planning implementation)wins if REFUTEDpartial/no-callModern Monetary Theorywins if REFUTEDpartial/no-callNew Keynesian (mainstream synthesis)wins if MIXEDpartial/no-callOrdoliberalism (Freiburg School)wins if SUPPORTEDpartial/no-callPost-Keynesianwins if REFUTEDpartial/no-callSocial Democraticwins if REFUTEDpartial/no-call

Pre-registration

registration ordering unverified
first-spec commit 4c8ce8e · 2026-07-18T22:11:21Z
run generated · 2026-06-29T17:52:43Z
Run timestamp predates this path's first git-add commit (rebase, rename, or pre-git local run). Spec hash is still the path's first-add commit — not repository HEAD — but ordering is not a clean pre-registration proof.

Canadian GDP per capita (PPP, constant international dollars) diverged negatively from a donor pool of resource-plus-advanced-anglophone-plus- small-open-developed economies (USA, AUS, NZL, GBR, NOR, CHE) starting around 2015, such that the Canadian per-capita trajectory 2015-2023 is materially below a country-and-year-fixed-effect counterfactual matched on pre-2015 level and covariates. The claim is narrowly about per-capita output trajectory; it does not assert that aggregate GDP fell (it did not) nor that Canadian headline growth was bad in every year. It asserts that per-capita productivity growth under the 2015-present policy mix was slow enough, and population growth fast enough, that the per-capita level has stagnated relative to the donor pool — consistent with the productivity-gap warning issued by Bank of Canada Senior Deputy Governor Rogers in March 2024 ("it's an emergency").

Falsification criterion — what would disprove this

set before the run · honoured after

This hypothesis is considered falsified if:

Not supported if β on canada_post_2015 is non-negative (>= 0) at p < 0.10 in the TWFE specification OR if the synthetic-control gap for Canada is non-negative for a majority of post-2015 years. If the TWFE β is negative and significant but the population-growth decomposition attributes more than 100% of the per-capita gap to denominator growth (i.e., real-GDP numerator growth is at or above donor-pool average), the headline claim is recorded as supported on per-capita stagnation but NOT supported on productivity- stagnation, and the result card must state this disaggregation explicitly.

formal test & threshold
test:      canada_post_2015_twfe_and_synthetic_control
threshold: β_canada_post_2015 < 0 at p < 0.10  AND  synthetic-control gap post_2015 negative in ≥60% of years. Population-growth decomposition reported alongside as interpretation guard.

Method

Template
panel_fe
Fixed effects
country, year
Clustering
country
Sample
7 countries · 2000 – 2023
Evidence type
causal

Primary: TWFE with country + year fixed effects. β on the canada_post_2015 indicator identifies the Canadian per-capita trajectory deviation from the donor pool's time-average under fixed-effects adjustment, with clustered standard errors. Secondary: synthetic-control robustness. For each post-2015 year, compute synthetic Canada as the weighted average of donor countries matched on 2000-2014 outcome + pre-2015 covariate means. Report Canada-actual minus Canada-synthetic gap. Treatment-date robustness: re-run with 2016 cutoff (first full year under the Trudeau government) and report both coefficients. Population-growth decomposition: Canadian population grew ~15% 2015-2023, substantially faster than the donor pool average. A mechanical accounting decomposition reports the share of the per-capita gap attributable to faster denominator growth vs slower numerator (real GDP) growth. This is descriptive, not causal, but is essential for interpretation: a large portion of Canadian per-capita stagnation reflects rapid immigration-driven population growth absorbing output, not an absolute contraction of the productive base.

Data

VariableSourceTransform
log_gdp_pc_ppp_constant
outcome
world_bank_wdi:NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.KDtier 2
log
log_gdp_pc_constant_lcu
outcome
world_bank_wdi:NY.GDP.PCAP.KNtier 2
log
canada_post_2015
treatment
constructed:indicator = 1 if country=CAN and year >= 2015; 0 otherwise. Tests whether Canadian per-capita trajectory deviates from ttier 5
indicator
log_population
control
world_bank_wdi:SP.POP.TOTLtier 2
log
trade_openness
control
world_bank_wdi:NE.TRD.GNFS.ZStier 2
level
log_gross_fixed_capital_formation_pct_gdp
control
world_bank_wdi:NE.GDI.FTOT.ZStier 2
log
terms_of_trade_index
control
world_bank_wdi:TT.PRI.MRCH.XD.WDtier 2
level

● ready  · ● pending  · ● reconstruct-needed

Detailed result card

Result card — canada_gdp_per_capita_stagnation_post_2015

Verdict: PARTIAL — coef=+0.0162, p=0.2 (above α=0.1); direction inconclusive

Pre-registration

  • Claim: Canadian GDP per capita (PPP, constant international dollars) diverged negatively from a donor pool of resource-plus-advanced-anglophone-plus- small-open-developed economies (USA, AUS, NZL, GBR, NOR, CHE) starting around 2015, such that the Canadian per-capita trajectory 2015-2023 is materially below a country-and-year-fixed-effect counterfactual matched on pre-2015 level and covariates. The claim is narrowly about per-capita output trajectory; it does not assert that aggregate GDP fell (it did not) nor that Canadian headline growth was bad in every year. It asserts that per-capita productivity growth under the 2015-present policy mix was slow enough, and population growth fast enough, that the per-capita level has stagnated relative to the donor pool — consistent with the productivity-gap warning issued by Bank of Canada Senior Deputy Governor Rogers in March 2024 ("it's an emergency").
  • Falsification rule: Not supported if β on canada_post_2015 is non-negative (>= 0) at p < 0.10 in the TWFE specification OR if the synthetic-control gap for Canada is non-negative for a majority of post-2015 years. If the TWFE β is negative and significant but the population-growth decomposition attributes more than 100% of the per-capita gap to denominator growth (i.e., real-GDP numerator growth is at or above donor-pool average), the headline claim is recorded as supported on per-capita stagnation but NOT supported on productivity- stagnation, and the result card must state this disaggregation explicitly.
  • Falsification test: canada_post_2015_twfe_and_synthetic_control

Estimate

  • Method: linearmodels.PanelOLS
  • Coefficient (treatment): +0.0162
  • Std error: 0.0125
  • p-value: 0.2
  • Observations: 96, countries: 4
  • Within R²: 0.59
  • Fixed effects: entity=True, time=True
  • Clustering: country

Variables resolved

  • world_bank_wdi:NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.KD → log_gdp_pc_ppp_constant (outcome, publisher=world_bank_wdi, n=8325)
  • world_bank_wdi:NY.GDP.PCAP.KN → log_gdp_pc_constant_lcu (outcome, publisher=world_bank_wdi, n=11429)
  • constructed: indicator = 1 if country=CAN and year >= 2015; 0 otherwise. Tests whether Canadian per-capita trajectory deviates from the donor pool's time-average from the start of the Trudeau government (November 2015; year-resolution treatment coded from 2016 in robustness). → canada_post_2015 (treatment, publisher=constructed, n=168)
  • world_bank_wdi:SP.POP.TOTL → log_population (controls, publisher=world_bank_wdi, n=14447)
  • world_bank_wdi:NE.TRD.GNFS.ZS → trade_openness (controls, publisher=world_bank_wdi, n=10714)
  • world_bank_wdi:NE.GDI.FTOT.ZS → log_gross_fixed_capital_formation_pct_gdp (controls, publisher=world_bank_wdi, n=9870)
  • world_bank_wdi:TT.PRI.MRCH.XD.WD → terms_of_trade_index (controls, publisher=world_bank_wdi, n=6478)

Generated by scripts/run_panel_fe.py at 2026-06-29T17:52:43+00:00

Strongest opposing argument

Every hypothesis ships with its charitable opposing argument. The framework earns credibility by handling objections at their strongest, not weakest.

Notes

Why this donor pool: USA, AUS, NZL are anglophone-federal-parliamentary economies with comparable legal/financial institutions; NOR and CHE are small-open-advanced peers with different resource/financial mixes; GBR anchors the anglophone group. The pool is NOT the full OECD — deliberately excluded are EU members whose 2015-2023 trajectories are dominated by euro-area + energy-crisis shocks Canada did not face. The 2015 cutoff corresponds to the November 2015 Liberal election victory; the treatment can be interpreted as the Trudeau-era policy mix but should not be read as attributing causality to a single identifiable policy. Per METHODOLOGY.md this is a whole-movement effect estimate, not a policy-specific effect estimate.

Authored framework. Read the transparency note.