IESET.
Hypotheses·growth·maduro_era_venezuelan_collapse_decomposition_2013_2023

The cumulative Venezuelan real-GDP contraction over the 2013- 2023 Maduro era (>70% peak-to-trough from the 2013 peak) is decomposed into four channels: (a) the exogenous 2014-2016 oil price shock, (b) the 2013-2019 monetary-fiscal-fusion channel culminating in the 2017-2019 Cagan-threshold hyperinflation, (c) the post-2015 US sanctions escalation (SDN 2017, PDVSA designation January 2019, secondary sanctions on tanker operators 2019-2020), and (d) post-2017 political destabilisation (2017 constitutional crisis, 2019 Guaidó parallel-government episode, 2024 election dispute).

The pre-registered claim is that channels (b) and (d) — the domestic monetary-fiscal-fusion and political-destabilisation channels — together account for a larger share of the cumulative loss than channels (a) + (c) — the exogenous oil-shock and sanctions channels — combined. A falsification would indicate the collapse is more exogenously driven than the framework's institutional-policy coding implies.

INCONCLUSIVEengine/runs/maduro_era_venezuelan_collapse_decomposition_2013_2023

INCONCLUSIVE_DATA_PENDING — treatment 'maduro_era_indicator' has no within-country variation under country fixed effects

confidence cueResult card produced; verdict unclassified.

policy briefCoverage too thin

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

This test cannot make a firm call yet. treatment 'maduro_era_indicator' has no within-country variation under country fixed effects

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 2005 to 2023, using a panel fe decomposition design, with fixed effects for country and year.

what was measured
What changed
  • Maduro era indicator
  • Venezuela oil shock exposure
What we checked
  • Real income pc cost-of-living adjusted
  • Real income level
  • Cumulative venezuela contraction 2013 peak to year
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/maduro_era_venezuelan_collapse_decomposition_2013_2023
descriptive sketch · model not yet run
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Who has skin in the game — schools predicting on this

2 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-callMarxian Political Economywins if MIXEDpartial/no-call

Pre-registration

registration ordering unverified
first-spec commit 4c8ce8e · 2026-07-18T22:11:21Z
run generated · 2026-06-29T17:52:54Z
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.

The cumulative Venezuelan real-GDP contraction over the 2013- 2023 Maduro era (>70% peak-to-trough from the 2013 peak) is decomposed into four channels: (a) the exogenous 2014-2016 oil price shock, (b) the 2013-2019 monetary-fiscal-fusion channel culminating in the 2017-2019 Cagan-threshold hyperinflation, (c) the post-2015 US sanctions escalation (SDN 2017, PDVSA designation January 2019, secondary sanctions on tanker operators 2019-2020), and (d) post-2017 political destabilisation (2017 constitutional crisis, 2019 Guaidó parallel-government episode, 2024 election dispute). The pre-registered claim is that channels (b) and (d) — the domestic monetary-fiscal-fusion and political-destabilisation channels — together account for a larger share of the cumulative loss than channels (a) + (c) — the exogenous oil-shock and sanctions channels — combined. A falsification would indicate the collapse is more exogenously driven than the framework's institutional-policy coding implies.

Falsification criterion — what would disprove this

set before the run · honoured after

This hypothesis is considered falsified if:

Not supported if EITHER (a) the combined variance share of channels (b) + (d) is less than 40% of the total explained variance in the VEN-donor-pool gap, OR (b) the oil-shock channel (a) alone accounts for more than 50% of the explained variance (which would indicate the collapse is predominantly exogenous, not policy-driven), OR (c) the sanctions channel (c) alone accounts for more than 40% of the explained variance (which would indicate the post-2015 sanctions escalation is the dominant force and the framework's institutional-quality coding is overstated).

formal test & threshold
test:      shapley_decomposition_channel_variance_shares
threshold: variance_share(b + d) > 0.40 AND variance_share(a) < 0.50 AND variance_share(c) < 0.40

Method

Template
panel_fe_decomposition
Fixed effects
country, year
Clustering
country
Sample
7 countries · 2005 – 2023
Evidence type
causal

Panel FE decomposition with four treatment intensities entered linearly (plus interaction terms for monetary_fiscal_fusion × sanctions). The estimator returns share-of-variance-explained estimates for each channel under Shapley-style decomposition (Fields 2003; Shorrocks 2013), reporting each channel's marginal contribution to the observed VEN-vs-donor-pool log-GDP-pc gap. Robustness: synthetic-control weighting on donor pool fitted to VEN pre-2013 dynamics; channel-specific counterfactuals holding one channel at donor-pool mean while allowing others to vary. Permutation inference on donor pool for significance.

Data

VariableSourceTransform
real_gdp_pc_ppp
outcome
world_bank_wdi:NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.KDtier 2
log_level_annual
real_gdp_level
outcome
world_bank_wdi:NY.GDP.MKTP.KDtier 2
maddison:mpd2020tier 3
log_level_annual
cumulative_venezuela_contraction_2013_peak_to_year
outcome
derivedlog(GDP_VEN_t) - log(GDP_VEN_2013)
maduro_era_indicator
treatment
constructed:= 1 for VEN from 2013 onward; 0 otherwisetier 5
binary
venezuela_oil_shock_exposure
treatment
constructed:(oil_price_change) * (oil_export_share_venezuela)tier 5
interaction
monetary_fiscal_fusion_intensity
treatment
constructed:1 once BCV direct financing of PDVSA reaches a threshold OR monthly inflation first breaches 20% m/m, whichever earlier;tier 5
graded_indicator
sanctions_regime_intensity
treatment
constructed:stepwise intensity — 0 pre-2015, 1 post-SDN-individuals 2017, 2 post-PDVSA-SDN Jan 2019, 3 post-secondary-sanctions Aug tier 5
ordinal
political_destabilisation_intensity
treatment
constructed:composite of (i) UCDP event counts for Venezuela, (ii) V-Dem electoral-integrity index inverse, (iii) WGI political stabtier 5
composite_index_rescaled_0_1
commodity_terms_of_trade
control
world_bank_wdi:TT.PRI.MRCH.XD.WDtier 2
log_level
oil_export_share_pre_shock
control
world_bank_wdi:TX.VAL.FUEL.ZS.UNtier 2
average_2010_2013
wgi_rule_of_law
control
wgi:GOV_WGI_RL.ESTtier 4
annual_level

● ready  · ● pending  · ● reconstruct-needed

Detailed result card

Result card — maduro_era_venezuelan_collapse_decomposition_2013_2023

Verdict: INCONCLUSIVE_DATA_PENDING — treatment 'maduro_era_indicator' has no within-country variation under country fixed effects

Pre-registration

  • Claim: The cumulative Venezuelan real-GDP contraction over the 2013- 2023 Maduro era (>70% peak-to-trough from the 2013 peak) is decomposed into four channels: (a) the exogenous 2014-2016 oil price shock, (b) the 2013-2019 monetary-fiscal-fusion channel culminating in the 2017-2019 Cagan-threshold hyperinflation, (c) the post-2015 US sanctions escalation (SDN 2017, PDVSA designation January 2019, secondary sanctions on tanker operators 2019-2020), and (d) post-2017 political destabilisation (2017 constitutional crisis, 2019 Guaidó parallel-government episode, 2024 election dispute). The pre-registered claim is that channels (b) and (d) — the domestic monetary-fiscal-fusion and political-destabilisation channels — together account for a larger share of the cumulative loss than channels (a) + (c) — the exogenous oil-shock and sanctions channels — combined. A falsification would indicate the collapse is more exogenously driven than the framework's institutional-policy coding implies.
  • Falsification rule: Not supported if EITHER (a) the combined variance share of channels (b) + (d) is less than 40% of the total explained variance in the VEN-donor-pool gap, OR (b) the oil-shock channel (a) alone accounts for more than 50% of the explained variance (which would indicate the collapse is predominantly exogenous, not policy-driven), OR (c) the sanctions channel (c) alone accounts for more than 40% of the explained variance (which would indicate the post-2015 sanctions escalation is the dominant force and the framework's institutional-quality coding is overstated).
  • Falsification test: shapley_decomposition_channel_variance_shares

Estimate

  • Error: treatment 'maduro_era_indicator' has no within-country variation under country fixed effects

Variables resolved

  • world_bank_wdi:NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.KD → real_gdp_pc_ppp (outcome, publisher=world_bank_wdi, n=8325)
  • world_bank_wdi:NY.GDP.MKTP.KD; maddison:mpd2020 → real_gdp_level (outcome, publisher=world_bank_wdi, n=12104)
  • constructed: = 1 for VEN from 2013 onward; 0 otherwise → maduro_era_indicator (treatment, publisher=constructed, n=133)
  • constructed: (oil_price_change) * (oil_export_share_venezuela) → venezuela_oil_shock_exposure (treatment, publisher=constructed, n=133)
  • constructed: 1 once BCV direct financing of PDVSA reaches a threshold OR monthly inflation first breaches 20% m/m, whichever earlier; scaled by intensity post-threshold → monetary_fiscal_fusion_intensity (treatment, publisher=constructed, n=133)
  • world_bank_wdi:TT.PRI.MRCH.XD.WD → commodity_terms_of_trade (controls, publisher=world_bank_wdi, n=6478)
  • world_bank_wdi:TX.VAL.FUEL.ZS.UN (fuel exports % merch) → oil_export_share_pre_shock (controls, publisher=world_bank_wdi, n=9329)
  • wgi:GOV_WGI_RL.EST → wgi_rule_of_law (controls, publisher=wgi, n=5296)

Variables missing data

  • derived (outcome, name=cumulative_venezuela_contraction_2013_peak_to_year) — vintage not on disk
  • constructed: stepwise intensity — 0 pre-2015, 1 post-SDN-individuals 2017, 2 post-PDVSA-SDN Jan 2019, 3 post-secondary-sanctions Aug 2019 (treatment, name=sanctions_regime_intensity) — vintage not on disk
  • constructed: composite of (i) UCDP event counts for Venezuela, (ii) V-Dem electoral-integrity index inverse, (iii) WGI political stability inverse (treatment, name=political_destabilisation_intensity) — vintage not on disk

Generated by scripts/run_panel_fe.py at 2026-06-29T17:52:54+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

Data-gated: VEN post-2013 national-accounts data are partial (BCV publication gaps 2015-2019, partial resumption 2020+). IMF estimates, Hanke-Krus inflation series, and opposition- calibrated estimates (Observatorio Venezolano de Finanzas) are all used with provenance-tracked. Pre-registration is binding; missing-data imputation rules are pre-specified in the v1 spec and cannot be post-hoc adjusted. This is the Maduro-era-specific decomposition. The broader venezuela_chavismo_framework_validation hypothesis tests the 1999-2020 aggregate gap; this hypothesis tests the 2013-2023 sub-period with explicit channel decomposition.

Authored framework. Read the transparency note.