IESET.
Hypotheses·growth·uk_economic_decline_multi_movement

UK GDP per capita (PPP, constant international dollars) diverged negatively from a matched synthetic counterfactual of similar-income anglophone/developed economies (USA, CAN, AUS, NZL, DEU, NLD, CHE) starting around 2008 and widening post-2016 (Brexit referendum).

The cumulative divergence by 2023 is meaningfully large and not explained by measurement differences or demographic composition. The policy- content fingerprint of UK decline is a combination of planning- restriction supply constraint + pro-cyclical fiscal stance 2001–2010 + austerity 2010–2016 + Brexit trade friction + industrial-energy-cost regime; no single movement is the decline, but the cumulative effect is identifiable.

INCONCLUSIVEengine/runs/uk_economic_decline_multi_movement

INCONCLUSIVE_DATA_PENDING — treatment 'uk_post_2008' 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 'uk_post_2008' 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 8 country or place units from 1996 to 2023, using a panel fe design, with fixed effects for country and year.

what was measured
What changed
  • Uk post 2008
  • Uk post brexit
What we checked
  • Log income pc cost-of-living adjusted
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/uk_economic_decline_multi_movement
Loading chart…

Who has skin in the game — schools predicting on this

17 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-callChicago School Monetarismwins if SUPPORTEDpartial/no-callClassical Liberalwins if SUPPORTEDpartial/no-callDegrowth / Ecological Macroeconomicswins if REFUTEDpartial/no-callDemocratic Socialism (Bernsteinian revisionism + modern)wins if REFUTEDpartial/no-callStructuralist / Developmentalistwins if MIXEDpartial/no-callEco-Socialism / Red-Greenwins if REFUTEDpartial/no-callEmpirical Pragmatist (the framework's house position)wins if MIXEDpartial/no-callNew Institutional Economicswins if MIXEDpartial/no-callMarket Socialism (Lange-Lerner tradition)wins if REFUTEDpartial/no-callMarxian Political Economywins if REFUTEDpartial/no-callMarxism-Leninism (central-planning implementation)wins if REFUTEDpartial/no-callModern Monetary Theorywins if REFUTEDpartial/no-callNew Keynesian (mainstream synthesis)wins if MIXEDpartial/no-callOrdoliberalism (Freiburg School)wins if SUPPORTEDpartial/no-callPost-Keynesianwins if REFUTEDpartial/no-callSocial Democraticwins if REFUTEDpartial/no-call

Pre-registration

registration ordering unverified
first-spec commit 4c8ce8e · 2026-07-18T22:11:21Z
run generated · 2026-06-29T17:53:06Z
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.

UK GDP per capita (PPP, constant international dollars) diverged negatively from a matched synthetic counterfactual of similar-income anglophone/developed economies (USA, CAN, AUS, NZL, DEU, NLD, CHE) starting around 2008 and widening post-2016 (Brexit referendum). The cumulative divergence by 2023 is meaningfully large and not explained by measurement differences or demographic composition. The policy- content fingerprint of UK decline is a combination of planning- restriction supply constraint + pro-cyclical fiscal stance 2001–2010 + austerity 2010–2016 + Brexit trade friction + industrial-energy-cost regime; no single movement is the decline, but the cumulative effect is identifiable.

Falsification criterion — what would disprove this

set before the run · honoured after

This hypothesis is considered falsified if:

PRIMARY (dispositive): the hypothesis is SUPPORTED if β_uk_post_2008 < 0 at p < 0.10 — UK diverged negatively from the anglophone-peer counterfactual starting around 2008. REFUTED if the coefficient is zero or positive at that significance. INFORMATIVE (not gating): β_uk_post_brexit — a second-wave brexit- specific coefficient. A significant negative is expected evidence of a marginal brexit effect; a direction-correct insignificant coefficient (as v1 run showed, β=-0.012, p=0.20) is noise-level mechanism colour, not refutation of the primary claim. INFORMATIVE (not gating): synthetic-control coverage of UK-below- counterfactual in ≥60% of post-2016 years — a robustness check, not a separate falsification gate.

formal test & threshold
test:      uk_decline_panel_fe_and_synthetic_control
threshold: PRIMARY: β_uk_post_2008 < 0 at p < 0.10 INFORMATIVE: β_uk_post_brexit direction (negative expected) INFORMATIVE: synthetic_control_gap_post_2016 negative in ≥60% of years

Method

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

Primary: TWFE with country + year FE. β_uk_post_2008 identifies UK's post-2008 trajectory deviation from the donor pool's time-average. β_uk_post_brexit (additional; nested) identifies incremental decline from 2016 onward, conditional on the post-2008 indicator. Synthetic-control robustness: for each post-2008 year, compute a synthetic UK trajectory as the weighted average of donor countries matched on pre-2008 outcome + pre-2008 covariate means; report UK actual vs synthetic gap. Weights are solved by least-squares fit of UK pre-period covariates to donor-pool covariate means. Sample excludes non-anglophone / non-advanced comparators (no ESP, ITA, GRC, PRT, FRA) because the hypothesis is about UK decline RELATIVE to a counterfactual of countries that started 1996 at broadly similar income levels and didn't share UK's specific policy trajectory.

Data

VariableSourceTransform
log_gdp_pc_ppp
outcome
world_bank_wdi:NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.KDtier 2
log
uk_post_2008
treatment
constructed:indicator = 1 if country=GBR and year >= 2008; 0 otherwise. Tests whether UK trajectory deviates from donor pool from thtier 5
indicator
uk_post_brexit
treatment
constructed:indicator = 1 if country=GBR and year >= 2016; 0 otherwise. Tests whether UK deviates further after the Brexit referendutier 5
indicator
log_population
control
world_bank_wdi:SP.POP.TOTLtier 2
log
urbanisation
control
world_bank_wdi:SP.URB.TOTL.IN.ZStier 2
level
trade_openness
control
world_bank_wdi:NE.TRD.GNFS.ZStier 2
level

● ready  · ● pending  · ● reconstruct-needed

Detailed result card

Result card — uk_economic_decline_multi_movement

Verdict: INCONCLUSIVE_DATA_PENDING — treatment 'uk_post_2008' has no within-country variation under country fixed effects

Pre-registration

  • Claim: UK GDP per capita (PPP, constant international dollars) diverged negatively from a matched synthetic counterfactual of similar-income anglophone/developed economies (USA, CAN, AUS, NZL, DEU, NLD, CHE) starting around 2008 and widening post-2016 (Brexit referendum). The cumulative divergence by 2023 is meaningfully large and not explained by measurement differences or demographic composition. The policy- content fingerprint of UK decline is a combination of planning- restriction supply constraint + pro-cyclical fiscal stance 2001–2010 + austerity 2010–2016 + Brexit trade friction + industrial-energy-cost regime; no single movement is the decline, but the cumulative effect is identifiable.
  • Falsification rule: PRIMARY (dispositive): the hypothesis is SUPPORTED if β_uk_post_2008 < 0 at p < 0.10 — UK diverged negatively from the anglophone-peer counterfactual starting around 2008. REFUTED if the coefficient is zero or positive at that significance. INFORMATIVE (not gating): β_uk_post_brexit — a second-wave brexit- specific coefficient. A significant negative is expected evidence of a marginal brexit effect; a direction-correct insignificant coefficient (as v1 run showed, β=-0.012, p=0.20) is noise-level mechanism colour, not refutation of the primary claim. INFORMATIVE (not gating): synthetic-control coverage of UK-below- counterfactual in ≥60% of post-2016 years — a robustness check, not a separate falsification gate.
  • Falsification test: uk_decline_panel_fe_and_synthetic_control

Estimate

  • Error: treatment 'uk_post_2008' has no within-country variation under country fixed effects

Variables resolved

  • world_bank_wdi:NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.KD → log_gdp_pc_ppp (outcome, publisher=world_bank_wdi, n=8325)
  • constructed: indicator = 1 if country=GBR and year >= 2008; 0 otherwise. Tests whether UK trajectory deviates from donor pool from the GFC onward. → uk_post_2008 (treatment, publisher=constructed, n=224)
  • constructed: indicator = 1 if country=GBR and year >= 2016; 0 otherwise. Tests whether UK deviates further after the Brexit referendum. → uk_post_brexit (treatment, publisher=constructed, n=224)
  • 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)
  • world_bank_wdi:NE.TRD.GNFS.ZS → trade_openness (controls, publisher=world_bank_wdi, n=10714)

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

UK movements coded in movements/: uk_planning_restriction_regime (structural, continuous) uk_blair_brown_fiscal_expansion_2001_2010 uk_cameron_osborne_austerity_2010_2016 uk_brexit_2016_2020 uk_truss_mini_budget_2022 uk_energy_cost_regime_2021_2024 v2 of this hypothesis would decompose the post-2008 decline into contributions attributable to each movement via event-study leads/ lags or synthetic-control done per-movement. v1 establishes the aggregate divergence as a stylised fact to be decomposed.

Authored framework. Read the transparency note.