IESET.
Hypotheses·energy·public_transport_investment_emissions_per_capita

Post-1945 US and Western European public investment in rail/transit produced lower per-capita emissions than the post-1980 privatised-deregulated transport regime.

INCONCLUSIVEengine/runs/public_transport_investment_emissions_per_capita

INCONCLUSIVE_DATA_PENDING — treatment 'post_1980_privatisation_indicator' has no within-country variation under country fixed effects

confidence cueResult card produced; verdict unclassified.

policy briefCoverage too thin

In ordinary language

In plain terms, this asks whether post 1980 privatisation indicator is actually linked to better or worse transport co2 per capita t from 1970 to 2020.

plain answer

This test cannot make a firm call yet. treatment 'post_1980_privatisation_indicator' has no within-country variation under country fixed effects

why it matters

This matters because energy 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 1970 to 2020, using a panel fe design, with fixed effects for country and year.

what was measured
What changed
  • Post 1980 privatisation indicator
What we checked
  • Transport co2 per capita t
  • Passenger rail share passenger km
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/public_transport_investment_emissions_per_capita
1007550250197019952020USAGBRFRADEUITAESPNLD
illustrative sketch · run pending
No coefficients yet. When the model fires, this chart will show transport_co2_per_capita_t across 10 sampled countries over 1970–2020.
The shapes above are stylised — none of the lines are real data.
Placeholder for public_transport_investment_emissions_per_capita. Published chart will be generated from engine/runs/public_transport_investment_emissions_per_capita/chart_data.json.

Who has skin in the game — schools predicting on this

5 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.

Degrowth / Ecological Macroeconomicswins if SUPPORTEDpartial/no-callEco-Socialism / Red-Greenwins if SUPPORTEDpartial/no-callMarket Socialism (Lange-Lerner tradition)wins if SUPPORTEDpartial/no-callMarxian Political Economywins if SUPPORTEDpartial/no-callModern Monetary Theorywins if SUPPORTEDpartial/no-call

Pre-registration

registration ordering unverified
first-spec commit 4c8ce8e · 2026-07-18T22:11:21Z
run generated · 2026-06-29T17:52:10Z
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.

Post-1945 US and Western European public investment in rail/transit produced lower per-capita emissions than the post-1980 privatised-deregulated transport regime.

Falsification criterion — what would disprove this

set before the run · honoured after

This hypothesis is considered falsified if:

The hypothesis is considered falsified if the pre-registered empirical test shows the opposite direction of the claim at conventional significance (p > 0.10), or if the primary outcome measure moves less than 10% in the claimed direction across the sample. Exact thresholds will be pinned in the variables and estimator blocks when this stub is promoted from draft.

formal test & threshold
test:      Pre/post-1980 comparison of transport-sector CO2 per capita (IEA, IRENA) for USA, GBR, FRA, DEU 1945-2020 conditional on transport-mode-share controls; country-clustered SEs, country+year FE. Refute if pre-1980 public-investment regime not associated with at least 15% lower transport CO2 per capita than post-1980 regime once oil-price/fuel-cost effects netted out at p<0.10.

Method

Template
panel_fe
Fixed effects
country, year
Clustering
country
Sample
10 countries · 1970 – 2020
Evidence type
associational

Cross-country panel-FE comparing pre/post-1980 transport CO2 per capita with post-1980 privatisation indicator as treatment, controlling for oil price, population density, and GDP per capita. Country and year FE. Caveat: regime indicator is coarse — postwar US emissions trajectory dominated by interstate-highway buildout and suburbanisation, not "public investment" per se; identification is weak by design.

Data

VariableSourceTransform
transport_co2_per_capita_t
outcome
owid:annual-co2-emissions-per-countrytier 2
level
passenger_rail_share_passenger_km
outcome
world_bank_wdi:IS.RRS.PASG.KMtier 2
level
post_1980_privatisation_indicator
treatment
constructed:indicator = 1 for years >= 1980 in countries that pursued transport-sector privatisation/deregulation (USA airlines 1978tier 5
indicator
log_gdp_per_capita
control
world_bank_wdi:NY.GDP.PCAP.KDtier 2
log
log_population_density
control
world_bank_wdi:EN.POP.DNSTtier 2
log
oil_price_brent
control
imf_pcps:POILBREtier 1
log

● ready  · ● pending  · ● reconstruct-needed

Detailed result card

Result card — public_transport_investment_emissions_per_capita

Verdict: INCONCLUSIVE_DATA_PENDING — treatment 'post_1980_privatisation_indicator' has no within-country variation under country fixed effects

Pre-registration

  • Claim: Post-1945 US and Western European public investment in rail/transit produced lower per-capita emissions than the post-1980 privatised-deregulated transport regime.
  • Falsification rule: The hypothesis is considered falsified if the pre-registered empirical test shows the opposite direction of the claim at conventional significance (p > 0.10), or if the primary outcome measure moves less than 10% in the claimed direction across the sample. Exact thresholds will be pinned in the variables and estimator blocks when this stub is promoted from draft.
  • Falsification test: Pre/post-1980 comparison of transport-sector CO2 per capita (IEA, IRENA) for USA, GBR, FRA, DEU 1945-2020 conditional on transport-mode-share controls; country-clustered SEs, country+year FE. Refute if pre-1980 public-investment regime not associated with at least 15% lower transport CO2 per capita than post-1980 regime once oil-price/fuel-cost effects netted out at p<0.10.

Estimate

  • Error: treatment 'post_1980_privatisation_indicator' has no within-country variation under country fixed effects

Variables resolved

  • world_bank_wdi:IS.RRS.PASG.KM → passenger_rail_share_passenger_km (outcome, publisher=world_bank_wdi, n=2613)
  • constructed: indicator = 1 for years >= 1980 in countries that pursued transport-sector privatisation/deregulation (USA airlines 1978, GBR rail 1993, EU liberalisation packages 1990s); 0 for postwar public-investment regime years. → post_1980_privatisation_indicator (treatment, publisher=constructed, n=510)
  • world_bank_wdi:NY.GDP.PCAP.KD → log_gdp_per_capita (controls, publisher=world_bank_wdi, n=12104)
  • world_bank_wdi:EN.POP.DNST → log_population_density (controls, publisher=world_bank_wdi, n=15048)
  • imf_pcps:POILBRE → oil_price_brent (controls, publisher=imf_pcps, n=370)

Variables missing data

  • owid:annual-co2-emissions-per-country (outcome, name=transport_co2_per_capita_t) — vintage not on disk

Generated by scripts/run_panel_fe.py at 2026-06-29T17:52:10+00:00

Notes

Maps the eco-socialist school's postwar-public-transit-vs-privatised claim to a long-run pre/post comparison of transport-sector emissions per capita across USA and Western Europe. Estimator and prior set; full pre-registration awaits steelman + human sign-off.

Authored framework. Read the transparency note.