IESET.
Hypotheses·institutional quality·nordic_outcome_persistence_decomposition

Nordic persistent outcome advantages (GDP per capita, Gini disposable income, unemployment) over comparable high-welfare Southern European economies over 1996-2023 are substantially explained by a decomposable set of institutional, market-economy, and fiscal-discipline features — specifically government effectiveness, rule of law, and debt-to-GDP ratio — rather than by welfare architecture or Nordic-specific cultural factors alone.

Country-specific residuals after channel controls and country fixed effects should account for a minority of the raw Nordic-vs-Southern-Europe outcome gap.

PARTIALengine/runs/nordic_outcome_persistence_decomposition

PARTIAL — coef=+0.0003551, p=0.993 (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=+0.0003551, p=0.993 (above α=0.1); direction inconclusive

why it matters

This matters because institutional quality claims should change belief only when they survive a pre-declared empirical test.

how the test works

It compares 10 country or place units from 1996 to 2023, using a panel fe decomposition design, with fixed effects for country and year.

what was measured
Possible pathway
  • Basic government quality
  • Rule of law
What we checked
  • Income per capita cost-of-living adjusted constant
  • Inequality disposable income
  • Unemployment rate
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/nordic_outcome_persistence_decomposition
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Who has skin in the game — schools predicting on this

4 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.

Empirical Pragmatist (the framework's house position)wins if SUPPORTEDpartial/no-callNew Institutional Economicswins if SUPPORTEDpartial/no-callNew Keynesian (mainstream synthesis)wins if SUPPORTEDpartial/no-callSocial Democraticwins if MIXEDpartial/no-call

Pre-registration

pre-registered
first-spec commit bae09ab · 2026-04-29T22:09:42Z
run generated · 2026-06-29T17:53:23Z

Nordic persistent outcome advantages (GDP per capita, Gini disposable income, unemployment) over comparable high-welfare Southern European economies over 1996-2023 are substantially explained by a decomposable set of institutional, market-economy, and fiscal-discipline features — specifically government effectiveness, rule of law, and debt-to-GDP ratio — rather than by welfare architecture or Nordic-specific cultural factors alone. Country-specific residuals after channel controls and country fixed effects should account for a minority of the raw Nordic-vs-Southern-Europe outcome gap.

Falsification criterion — what would disprove this

set before the run · honoured after

This hypothesis is considered falsified if:

Not supported if the Nordic-dummy coefficient after including the three decomposition channels (government effectiveness, rule of law, debt/GDP) plus country and year fixed effects remains greater than 30 percent of the raw Nordic-dummy coefficient (pre-channel) across all three outcome specifications. A large residual would indicate Nordic-specific factors beyond the measured channels are doing most of the explanatory work, and the hypothesis — that decomposable institutional features explain the gap — would be weakened. A clean finding requires channels to absorb at least 70 percent of the raw gap on the primary outcome (log GDP per capita PPP) and at least 50 percent on the other two.

formal test & threshold
test:      nordic_dummy_residual_share_across_outcomes
threshold: residual_share(gdp_pc_ppp)  <= 0.30  AND residual_share(gini)        <= 0.50  AND residual_share(unemployment) <= 0.50

Method

Template
panel_fe_decomposition
Fixed effects
country, year
Clustering
country
Sample
10 countries · 1996 – 2023
Evidence type
causal

Specification: outcome = b0 + b1*GovEff + b2*RuleOfLaw + b3*DebtGDP + b4*log(pop) + b5*urbanisation + alpha_i (country FE) + gamma_t (year FE) + epsilon. Driscoll-Kraay SEs clustered by country to handle cross- sectional dependence. Decomposition step: re-estimate on Nordic-vs- Southern-Europe dummy panel without channels vs with channels; report how much of the raw Nordic-indicator coefficient the channels absorb. Known channel omissions for v1: OECD EPL (labour market flexibility) and WVS/V-Dem social trust measures are not yet fetcher-ready. These are acknowledged in the falsification rule — a large residual in v1 is compatible with either the hypothesis being weak OR the missing channels being important. A v2 spec adds these once the fetchers ship and reports whether the residual collapses. Norway's SWF mechanism is absorbed into the Norway country fixed effect rather than modelled as a channel variable; the hypothesis does not claim the SWF's contribution is separable from Norway's country-specific time-invariant features at v1.

Data

VariableSourceTransform
gdp_per_capita_ppp_constant
outcome
world_bank_wdi:NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.KDtier 2
log
gini_disposable_income
outcome
world_bank_wdi:SI.POV.GINItier 2
level
unemployment_rate
outcome
world_bank_wdi:SL.UEM.TOTL.ZStier 2
level
government_effectiveness
channel
wgi:GOV_WGI_GE.ESTtier 4
level
rule_of_law
channel
wgi:GOV_WGI_RL.ESTtier 4
level
debt_to_gdp
channel
world_bank_wdi:GC.DOD.TOTL.GD.ZStier 2
level
log_population
control
world_bank_wdi:SP.POP.TOTLtier 2
log
urbanisation
control
world_bank_wdi:SP.URB.TOTL.IN.ZStier 2
level

● ready  · ● pending  · ● reconstruct-needed

Detailed result card

Result card — nordic_outcome_persistence_decomposition

Verdict: PARTIAL — coef=+0.0003551, p=0.993 (above α=0.1); direction inconclusive

Pre-registration

  • Claim: Nordic persistent outcome advantages (GDP per capita, Gini disposable income, unemployment) over comparable high-welfare Southern European economies over 1996-2023 are substantially explained by a decomposable set of institutional, market-economy, and fiscal-discipline features — specifically government effectiveness, rule of law, and debt-to-GDP ratio — rather than by welfare architecture or Nordic-specific cultural factors alone. Country-specific residuals after channel controls and country fixed effects should account for a minority of the raw Nordic-vs-Southern-Europe outcome gap.
  • Falsification rule: Not supported if the Nordic-dummy coefficient after including the three decomposition channels (government effectiveness, rule of law, debt/GDP) plus country and year fixed effects remains greater than 30 percent of the raw Nordic-dummy coefficient (pre-channel) across all three outcome specifications. A large residual would indicate Nordic-specific factors beyond the measured channels are doing most of the explanatory work, and the hypothesis — that decomposable institutional features explain the gap — would be weakened. A clean finding requires channels to absorb at least 70 percent of the raw gap on the primary outcome (log GDP per capita PPP) and at least 50 percent on the other two.
  • Falsification test: nordic_dummy_residual_share_across_outcomes

Estimate

  • Method: linearmodels.PanelOLS
  • Coefficient (treatment): +0.0003551
  • Std error: 0.04013
  • p-value: 0.993
  • Observations: 200, countries: 8
  • Within R²: 0.108
  • Fixed effects: entity=True, time=True
  • Clustering: country

Variables resolved

  • world_bank_wdi:NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.KD → gdp_per_capita_ppp_constant (outcome, publisher=world_bank_wdi, n=8325)
  • world_bank_wdi:SI.POV.GINI → gini_disposable_income (outcome, publisher=world_bank_wdi, n=2430)
  • world_bank_wdi:SL.UEM.TOTL.ZS → unemployment_rate (outcome, publisher=world_bank_wdi, n=6874)
  • wgi:GOV_WGI_GE.EST → government_effectiveness (decomposition_channels, publisher=wgi, n=5168)
  • wgi:GOV_WGI_RL.EST → rule_of_law (decomposition_channels, publisher=wgi, n=5296)
  • world_bank_wdi:GC.DOD.TOTL.GD.ZS → debt_to_gdp (decomposition_channels, publisher=world_bank_wdi, n=1788)
  • world_bank_wdi:SP.POP.TOTL → log_population (controls, publisher=world_bank_wdi, n=14447)
  • world_bank_wdi:SP.URB.TOTL.IN.ZS → urbanisation (controls, publisher=world_bank_wdi, n=16965)

Generated by scripts/run_panel_fe.py at 2026-06-29T17:53:23+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

First-run readiness: all cited publishers (world_bank_wdi, wgi) are status: ready in data/fetchers/publishers.yaml. All cited series are in data/vintages/ as of the Apr-2026 baseline bootstrap pull (WDI NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.KD, SI.POV.GINI, SL.UEM.TOTL.ZS, GC.DOD.TOTL.GD.ZS, SP.POP.TOTL, SP.URB.TOTL.IN.ZS; WGI GE.EST, RL.EST). This is the first hypothesis in the library whose variables are fully data-on- disk, making it the natural first-run candidate. The spec references D.2.9 Extended Nordic Model Analysis in the condition taxonomy; that entry's institutional_features list is the source of the channels specified here. v2 will add labour market flexibility and social trust as channels when OECD EPL and WVS/V-Dem fetchers ship.

Authored framework. Read the transparency note.