IESET.
Hypotheses·growth·cuba_special_period_resilience

Cuban post-1991 Special Period shows that socialist planning can maintain health and education outputs under severe external shock better than market economies of similar GDP per capita.

PARTIALengine/runs/cuba_special_period_resilience

PARTIAL — shape=panel_summary, |Δ_log|=0.0801, ratio=1.08; claim direction ambiguous

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. shape=panel_summary, |Δ_log|=0.0801, ratio=1.08; claim direction ambiguous

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 9 country or place units from 1991 to 2000, using a descriptive design.

what was measured
What we checked
  • Life expectancy at birth
  • Infant mortality rate
  • School enrollment primary
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

No evidence packet has been generated yet.

Results

engine/runs/cuba_special_period_resilience
1007550250199119962000CUBJAMDOMHTINICUKRMDA
illustrative sketch · run pending
No coefficients yet. When the model fires, this chart will show life_expectancy_at_birth across 9 sampled countries over 1991–2000.
The shapes above are stylised — none of the lines are real data.
Placeholder for cuba_special_period_resilience. Published chart will be generated from engine/runs/cuba_special_period_resilience/chart_data.json.

Who has skin in the game — schools predicting on this

1 school 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.

Marxism-Leninism (central-planning implementation)wins if SUPPORTEDpartial/no-call

Pre-registration

pre-registered
first-spec commit bae09ab · 2026-04-29T22:09:42Z
run generated · 2026-04-29T21:54:23Z

Cuban post-1991 Special Period shows that socialist planning can maintain health and education outputs under severe external shock better than market economies of similar GDP per capita.

Falsification criterion — what would disprove this

set before the run · honoured after

This hypothesis is considered falsified if:

PRIMARY (dispositive — all four conditions must hold for SUPPORTED): (P1) Cuba's LE change 1991-2000 >= the UNSHOCKED market-economy pool mean {CRI, PAN, MEX, ECU, COL, DOM (no shock)}; (P2) Cuba's IMR % reduction 1991-2000 >= the unshocked pool mean; (P3) Cuban nutrition status during 1991-1995 trough did not show documented epidemic-scale degradation (B-vitamin deficiency / optic neuropathy proxy, anaemia prevalence, undernourishment prevalence); (P4) Cuban primary completion + literacy 1991-2000 within ±5 pp of unshocked pool mean. REFUTED if Cuba underperforms the unshocked pool on EITHER LE or IMR by more than 1 year / 5 pp respectively, OR the documented optic-neuropathy epidemic (50,000+ cases 1991-1995) is included in the test as a SUPPORTED-disqualifying nutrition-health failure. PARTIAL if one of the four conditions fails by less than 50% of its threshold. INFORMATIVE: original v2 pool comparison (Caribbean + post-Soviet shocked) reported as colour; emigration share trajectory; food-import dependence. METHOD_VALID: requires (a) WDI LE+IMR coverage for CUB + at least 4 of 6 unshocked comparators 1991-2000; (b) at least one nutrition-status indicator on disk for CUB 1991-2000 (FAO undernourishment prevalence PA.NUS.PCAP, WHO anaemia prevalence WSH_WATER_BASIC, or a hand-curated Cuban optic-neuropathy epidemic time series); (c) WDI primary completion (SE.PRM.CMPT.ZS) and adult literacy (SE.ADT.LITR.ZS) for CUB + comparators. If any leg of (a)/(b)/(c) is missing, verdict is inconclusive (data gap), not SUPPORTED on the available subset.

formal test & threshold
test:      cuba_vs_unshocked_market_pool_canonical_health_education_1991_2000
threshold: PRIMARY-LE: (LE_CUB_2000 - LE_CUB_1991) - mean_unshocked_pool(LE delta) >= 0 yrs. PRIMARY-IMR: pct_reduction_CUB - mean_unshocked_pool(pct_reduction) >= 0. PRIMARY-NUTRITION: no documented epidemic-scale nutrition deficiency during 1991-1995 trough (gating on the optic-neuropathy proxy). PRIMARY-EDU: |primary completion + literacy delta CUB - pool| <= 5pp on the available indicator coverage.

Method

Template
descriptive
Clustering
none
Sample
9 countries · 1991 – 2000
Evidence type
descriptive

Head-to-head 1991-vs-2000 change for Cuba against the mean of an ex-ante-fixed Caribbean + post-Soviet comparator pool, on two primary metrics (life expectancy, infant mortality). No inferential test; the falsification rule is dispositive on the sign and pool-relative magnitude of the trajectory difference.

Data

VariableSourceTransform
life_expectancy_at_birth
outcome
world_bank_wdi:SP.DYN.LE00.INtier 2
—
infant_mortality_rate
outcome
world_bank_wdi:SP.DYN.IMRT.INtier 2
—
school_enrollment_primary
outcome
world_bank_wdi:SE.PRM.ENRRtier 2
—
gdp_per_capita_ppp
outcome
world_bank_wdi:NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.KDtier 2
—

● ready  · ● pending  · ● reconstruct-needed

Detailed result card

Result card — cuba_special_period_resilience

Verdict: PARTIAL — shape=panel_summary, |Δ_log|=0.0801, ratio=1.08; claim direction ambiguous

Pre-registration

  • Claim: Cuban post-1991 Special Period shows that socialist planning can maintain health and education outputs under severe external shock better than market economies of similar GDP per capita.
  • Falsification rule: PRIMARY (dispositive — all four conditions must hold for SUPPORTED): (P1) Cuba's LE change 1991-2000 >= the UNSHOCKED market-economy pool mean {CRI, PAN, MEX, ECU, COL, DOM (no shock)}; (P2) Cuba's IMR % reduction 1991-2000 >= the unshocked pool mean; (P3) Cuban nutrition status during 1991-1995 trough did not show documented epidemic-scale degradation (B-vitamin deficiency / optic neuropathy proxy, anaemia prevalence, undernourishment prevalence); (P4) Cuban primary completion + literacy 1991-2000 within ±5 pp of unshocked pool mean. REFUTED if Cuba underperforms the unshocked pool on EITHER LE or IMR by more than 1 year / 5 pp respectively, OR the documented optic-neuropathy epidemic (50,000+ cases 1991-1995) is included in the test as a SUPPORTED-disqualifying nutrition-health failure. PARTIAL if one of the four conditions fails by less than 50% of its threshold. INFORMATIVE: original v2 pool comparison (Caribbean + post-Soviet shocked) reported as colour; emigration share trajectory; food-import dependence. METHOD_VALID: requires (a) WDI LE+IMR coverage for CUB + at least 4 of 6 unshocked comparators 1991-2000; (b) at least one nutrition-status indicator on disk for CUB 1991-2000 (FAO undernourishment prevalence PA.NUS.PCAP, WHO anaemia prevalence WSH_WATER_BASIC, or a hand-curated Cuban optic-neuropathy epidemic time series); (c) WDI primary completion (SE.PRM.CMPT.ZS) and adult literacy (SE.ADT.LITR.ZS) for CUB + comparators. If any leg of (a)/(b)/(c) is missing, verdict is inconclusive (data gap), not SUPPORTED on the available subset.
  • Falsification test: cuba_vs_unshocked_market_pool_canonical_health_education_1991_2000

Comparison

  • shape: panel_summary
  • treatment_country: CUB
  • treatment_value: 76.95769999999999
  • donor_pool_median: 71.03264999999999
  • ratio: 1.083413050195931
  • log_diff: 0.08011628976255203
  • n_donor_countries: 8
  • end_year_window: [1995, 2000]

Variables resolved

  • world_bank_wdi:SP.DYN.LE00.IN → life_expectancy_at_birth (outcome, publisher=world_bank_wdi, n=16996)
  • world_bank_wdi:SP.DYN.IMRT.IN → infant_mortality_rate (outcome, publisher=world_bank_wdi, n=13405)
  • world_bank_wdi:SE.PRM.ENRR → school_enrollment_primary (outcome, publisher=world_bank_wdi, n=9461)
  • world_bank_wdi:NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.KD → gdp_per_capita_ppp (outcome, publisher=world_bank_wdi, n=8360)

Generated by scripts/run_descriptive.py at 2026-04-29T21:54:23+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

Seeded from a Marxist-Leninist position-claim that Cuba's Special Period vindicates socialist-planning resilience to external shocks. Single-country comparative case. WDI does not publish NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.KD for Cuba in this window, so the comparator pool is fixed ex-ante in the YAML rather than selected on observed PPP-GDP per capita.

Authored framework. Read the transparency note.