IESET.
Hypotheses·regulatory·nz_rogernomics_institutional_complements

New Zealand post-1984 Rogernomics reforms delivered growth improvement only in conjunction with later institutional reforms (Reserve Bank Act 1989, Fiscal Responsibility Act 1994), not from deregulation alone.

REFUTEDengine/runs/nz_rogernomics_institutional_complements

refuted — full-stack 1994-2000 NZ-vs-donor-pool growth gap is -0.69pp/yr (NEGATIVE — NZ lagged the donor pool even after the RBA Act + FRA). Institutional complements failed to lift growth above the counterfactual; deregulation-only window gap was -1.93pp/yr.

confidence cueThis test cuts against the claim as written or misses its pre-declared threshold.

policy briefNeeds review

In ordinary language

In plain terms, this asks whether rogernomics indicator is actually linked to better or worse real income per capita growth from 1980 to 2000.

plain answer

The data did not support the prediction. full-stack 1994-2000 NZ-vs-donor-pool growth gap is -0.69pp/yr (NEGATIVE - NZ lagged the donor pool even after the RBA Act + FRA).

why it matters

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

how the test works

It compares 5 country or place units from 1980 to 2000, using a event study design, with fixed effects for year.

what was measured
What changed
  • Rogernomics indicator
  • Rba act indicator
What we checked
  • Real income per capita growth
  • Log real income per capita
  • Log productivity pwt
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/nz_rogernomics_institutional_complements
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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.

New Institutional Economicswins if SUPPORTEDschool refuted

Pre-registration

pre-registered
first-spec commit bae09ab · 2026-04-29T22:09:42Z

New Zealand post-1984 Rogernomics reforms delivered growth improvement only in conjunction with later institutional reforms (Reserve Bank Act 1989, Fiscal Responsibility Act 1994), not from deregulation alone.

Falsification criterion — what would disprove this

set before the run · honoured after

This hypothesis is considered falsified if:

PRIMARY (dispositive): the dispositive thresholds for this hypothesis are encoded directly in engine/runs/nz_rogernomics_institutional_complements/replication.py and pinned in methodology_note. The auto-grader's verdict in diagnostics.json corresponds to those dispositive checks, not to the legacy boilerplate. See methodology_note for the exact pre-registered thresholds. Headline: PRIMARY (dispositive) — SUPPORTED iff:

formal test & threshold
test:      Event-study comparing NZ TFP and GDP-growth pre/post 1989 RBA Act and 1994 FRA vs OECD donor pool; growth gap >1pp emerges only post-1994 with p<0.10 supports institutional-complementarity claim.

Method

Template
event_study
Fixed effects
year
Clustering
year
Sample
5 countries · 1980 – 2000
Evidence type
associational

NZ-only event study 1984-2000 around three sequential treatment dates (1984 Rogernomics, 1989 RBA Act, 1994 FRA). Compare TFP and real GDP growth trajectories vs OECD donor-pool counterfactual (mean of AUS, USA, GBR, CAN as control). Sub-period decomposition: 1984-1988 (deregulation only), 1989-1993 (deregulation + RBA), 1994-2000 (full institutional stack). Caveat: small-N single-country, sequential-treatment overlap limits clean attribution.

Data

VariableSourceTransform
real_gdp_per_capita_growth
outcome
world_bank_wdi:NY.GDP.PCAP.KD.ZGtier 2
level
log_real_gdp_per_capita
outcome
world_bank_wdi:NY.GDP.PCAP.KDtier 2
log
log_tfp_pwt
outcome
pwt:rtfpnatier 3
log
inflation_rate
outcome
world_bank_wdi:FP.CPI.TOTL.ZGtier 2
level
rogernomics_indicator
treatment
constructed:indicator = 1 for NZL years >= 1984 (Lange Labour government deregulation).tier 5
indicator
rba_act_indicator
treatment
constructed:indicator = 1 for NZL years >= 1989 (Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act inflation-targeting framework).tier 5
indicator
fra_act_indicator
treatment
constructed:indicator = 1 for NZL years >= 1994 (Fiscal Responsibility Act).tier 5
indicator
log_population
control
world_bank_wdi:SP.POP.TOTLtier 2
log
trade_openness
control
world_bank_wdi:NE.TRD.GNFS.ZStier 2
level

● ready  · ● pending  · ● reconstruct-needed

Detailed result card

NZ Rogernomics — institutional complements vs deregulation alone

Verdict: refuted — full-stack 1994-2000 NZ-vs-donor-pool growth gap is -0.69pp/yr (NEGATIVE — NZ lagged the donor pool even after the RBA Act + FRA). Institutional complements failed to lift growth above the counterfactual; deregulation-only window gap was -1.93pp/yr.

Summary

Three-window decomposition of the NZ-vs-donor-pool real-GDP-per-capita growth gap, where the donor pool is the equally-weighted mean of AUS, USA, GBR, CAN (per spec.sample.countries).

  • Pre 1980-1983 (baseline): donor-pool growth typically faster.
  • Window A 1984-1988 (deregulation only): if NZ lagged or matched donors, the institutional-complements story is consistent. If NZ already led by >=+1.0pp/yr, the story is refuted.
  • Window B 1989-1993 (deregulation + RBA Act): inflation-targeting begins; transition.
  • Window C 1994-2000 (full stack incl. FRA): if NZ now leads by a >=+1.0pp/yr lift over Window A, the complements story is supported.

Window-by-window real-GDP-per-capita growth

| Window | NZ growth %/yr | Donor-pool mean %/yr | Donor n | Gap pp | |---|---:|---:|---:|---:| | Pre 1980-1983 | +1.86 | +0.32 | 4 | +1.54 | | A 1984-1988 (dereg only) | +1.42 | +3.35 | 4 | -1.93 | | B 1989-1993 (+RBA) | -0.32 | +0.64 | 4 | -0.96 | | C 1994-2000 (full stack) | +2.39 | +3.08 | 4 | -0.69 |

Window-C minus Window-A lift: +1.24pp/yr (threshold for SUPPORT: ≥+1.0pp/yr).

Informative legs (do not gate verdict)

PWT log-TFP gap (NZ − donor mean): pre +0.056, A +0.013, B -0.005, C -0.010 (log units; lift C−A: -0.023).

NZ CPI inflation by window: pre 14.0%, A 11.4%, B 3.3%, C 1.8%. RBA-Act mechanism check (B − A): -8.0pp (negative = inflation fell after the RBA Act, consistent with the inflation-targeting mechanism).

Method

Window-mean of WDI annual real-GDP-per-capita growth (NY.GDP.PCAP.KD.ZG) for NZ and for the donor-pool mean across AUS, USA, GBR, CAN. Three pre-registered sub-windows mapping to the three sequential reform stages (1984 deregulation, 1989 RBA Act, 1994 FRA). PRIMARY (dispositive) verdict gates on the pattern of the gap across windows, not on a t-statistic — N is far too small (5 countries × ~5 years/window) for inferential statistics to carry weight. Informative TFP and inflation legs are reported for context but do not gate.

Caveats

  • Small-N (5 countries, 4 windows): sequential treatments overlap; clean attribution is impossible. This is a descriptive-comparative test of an institutionalist framing, not a causal-identification claim.
  • Donor pool (AUS, USA, GBR, CAN) inherits its own contemporaneous shocks (e.g. AUS deregulated in parallel under Hawke-Keating; UK ran Thatcher-era reforms; USA had Reagan disinflation). The donor pool is NOT a clean no-reform counterfactual — it is the spec's chosen comparator for a 'similar Anglosphere economies' framing.
  • Window boundaries are calendar-year aligned; reform implementation lags can shift effective treatment dates by 1-2 years.
  • A market-liberal counter-reading (deregulation J-curve) predicts the same temporal pattern via different causal mechanism. This test cannot distinguish them — see steelman in the spec.

Data

  • world_bank_wdi:NY.GDP.PCAP.KD — data/vintages/world_bank_wdi/NY.GDP.PCAP.KD@2026-04-27T090917Z.parquet
  • pwt:rtfpna — data/vintages/pwt/rtfpna@2026-04-27T090915Z.parquet
  • world_bank_wdi:FP.CPI.TOTL.ZG — data/vintages/world_bank_wdi/FP.CPI.TOTL.ZG@2026-04-27T093450Z.parquet

Notes

Origin is auto-generated coverage-gap stub seeded from institutionalist framing of NZ Rogernomics growth as conditional on RBA-1989 + FRA-1994 institutional complements. Human review required.

Authored framework. Read the transparency note.