Pre-registration
Swedish Meidner plan / wage-earner funds 1984-1991 did not produce measurable capital flight during their brief implementation, falsifying claims that citizen ownership funds trigger disinvestment.
Falsification criterion — what would disprove this
This hypothesis is considered falsified if:
Primary event-window proxy compares Sweden's 1984-1991 wage-earner-fund period with the 1980-1983 pre-period using WDI gross fixed capital formation (% GDP), FDI net inflows (% GDP), and the SEK/USD official exchange rate. The null/no-large-capital-flight claim is supported if investment does not fall by more than 2pp of GDP, FDI inflows do not fall by more than 1pp of GDP, and the SEK/USD average does not depreciate by more than 25% relative to pre-period. It is refuted if at least two of those three capital-flight proxies breach their thresholds. Otherwise it is weakened.
formal test & threshold
test: sweden_meidner_macro_capital_flight_proxy_1984_1991 threshold: support if fewer than one proxy breaches; refute if at least two proxies breach
Method
- Template
event_study- Fixed effects
date- Clustering
date- Sample
- 1 countries · 1980 – 1995
- Evidence type
- associational
Event study around the 1984 Meidner-fund enactment in Sweden, with capital flows (BoP), corporate investment, and SEK as outcomes. Tight pre/post window 1980-1991 (until 1991 fund abolition). Caveat noted: small fund scale limits power.
Data
| Variable | Source | Transform |
|---|---|---|
portfolio_capital_outflows_sweden outcome | imf:BFOAFAtier 2 | log |
gross_fixed_capital_formation outcome | world_bank_wdi:NE.GDI.FTOT.ZStier 2 | level |
corporate_investment_share outcome | world_bank_wdi:NE.GDI.FPRV.ZStier 2 | level |
sek_usd_exchange_rate outcome | world_bank_wdi:PA.NUS.FCRFtier 2 | log_yoy |
sek_real_effective_exchange_rate outcome | bis:WS_EERtier 2 | log |
meidner_fund_enactment treatment | derived:meidner_fund_datestier 4 | indicator |
oecd_fdi_inflows_average control | world_bank_wdi:BX.KLT.DINV.WD.GD.ZStier 2 | level |
real_gdp_per_capita_growth control | world_bank_wdi:NY.GDP.PCAP.KD.ZGtier 2 | level |
real_interest_rate_sweden control | world_bank_wdi:FR.INR.RINRtier 2 | level |
● ready · ● pending · ● reconstruct-needed
Detailed result card
meidner_wage_earner_fund_capital_flight
Verdict: SUPPORTED — none of the three registered macro capital-flight proxies breached the Sweden 1984-1991 Meidner-fund thresholds.
Registered Metrics
- investment_pct_gdp: pre 24.246, event 26.329, change +2.083, breach=False.
- fdi_inflows_pct_gdp: pre 0.211, event 0.800, change +0.589, breach=False.
- sek_usd_exchange_rate: pre 5.811, event 6.860, change +0.181, breach=False.
Method Note
The 1992 Swedish currency crisis is outside the primary event window; this is a macro-proxy test, not household-level offshore wealth measurement.
Strongest opposing argument
Every hypothesis ships with its charitable opposing argument. The framework earns credibility by handling objections at their strongest, not weakest.
Notes
Stub seeded from a market-socialist school prediction about Meidner-fund capital-flight null. v2 pins a limited macro-proxy event test using local WDI data. The fund was small-scale and short-lived, so support remains evidence against a large immediate capital-flight shock, not proof that larger citizen-ownership funds are harmless.