Pre-registration
Countries in the top quartile of Heritage trade freedom in 2024 have lower latest-available extreme-poverty headcount than bottom-quartile countries, consistent with free-market country policy regimes outperforming less market-oriented regimes on this outcome.
Falsification criterion — what would disprove this
This hypothesis is considered falsified if:
SUPPORTED if the high-market quartile has the pre-registered outcome direction versus the low-market quartile at Welch p<=0.10. REFUTED if the opposite direction is significant at p<=0.10. Otherwise PARTIAL; insufficient group coverage is INCONCLUSIVE_DATA_PENDING.
formal test & threshold
test: heritage_market_cross_section_heritage_trade_freedom_extreme_poverty_current_gap threshold: [object Object]
Method
- Template
descriptive- Sample
- 183 countries · 2024 – 2024
- Evidence type
- descriptive
Welch top-vs-bottom quartile mean contrast. This is a screen for broad market-order associations, not a causal policy effect estimate.
Data
| Variable | Source | Transform |
|---|---|---|
extreme_poverty outcome | world_bank_wdi:SI.POV.DDAYtier 2 | latest_available_country_level_since_2018 |
trade_freedom treatment | heritage_ief:ief_paneltier 4 | 2024_component_score:trade_freedom |
● ready · ● pending · ● reconstruct-needed
Detailed result card
Result card — heritage_trade_freedom_extreme_poverty_current_gap
Verdict: SUPPORTED — top-vs-bottom gap has expected sign - and Welch p=8.095e-07
Design
- Heritage component:
trade_freedomusing release year2024. - Comparison: top
25%vs bottom25%of market-score countries. - Outcome source:
world_bank_wdi:SI.POV.DDAYlatest available country observation since2018.
Estimate
- High-market mean:
0.9857142857142859over42countries. - Low-market mean:
27.703125over32countries. - Difference, high minus low:
-26.717410714285712. - Welch p-value:
8.094714387496073e-07.
Caveat
This is a candidate cross-sectional screen. It is useful for broad Austrian/ordoliberal market-order triage, but it is not a causal design and should not be scoreboard-promoted without robustness checks.
Strongest opposing argument
Every hypothesis ships with its charitable opposing argument. The framework earns credibility by handling objections at their strongest, not weakest.