Pre-registration
UK post-war nationalised industries (coal, rail, steel, gas) through 1979 achieved capital-investment rates comparable to sectoral peers in West Germany and France, falsifying the claim that public ownership categorically starves investment.
Falsification criterion — what would disprove this
This hypothesis is considered falsified if:
PRIMARY (dispositive): the hypothesis is SUPPORTED if the absolute gap |mean(UK csh_i, 1950-1979) - mean(DEU+FRA csh_i, 1950-1979)| is at most 5 percentage points of gross capital formation share of GDP. REFUTED if the UK undershoots the DEU+FRA peer mean by more than 10pp. Outcomes between -10pp and -5pp (UK below peers by 5-10pp) score as weakened (directionally consistent with crowd-out but not dispositive under the symmetric SUPPORTED band). Outcomes between +5pp and +10pp (UK above peers by 5-10pp) score as partial. METHOD_VALID: PWT csh_i has non-null annual coverage for all three countries (GBR, DEU, FRA) for at least 28 of the 30 years in 1950-1979. INFORMATIVE: per-country mean csh_i, year-by-year UK-vs-peer-mean gap series, reported in diagnostics.
formal test & threshold
test: uk_vs_peer_country_csh_i_gap_1950_1979
threshold: PRIMARY: |mean(UK csh_i 1950-1979) - mean({DEU,FRA} csh_i 1950-1979)| <= 0.05 SUPPORTED. UK below peers by > 0.10 REFUTED.Method
- Template
panel_fe- Fixed effects
country, year- Clustering
country- Sample
- 3 countries · 1950 – 1979
- Evidence type
- associational
v2 country-level mean comparison. UK csh_i 1950-1979 vs peer (DEU+FRA) mean csh_i over the same window. Implementation in engine/runs/uk_nationalised_industry_investment_rates/replication.py computes the gap directly rather than running a regression — with only 3 countries and 30 years a panel FE adds noise without additional identification.
Data
| Variable | Source | Transform |
|---|---|---|
capital_investment_rate outcome | pwt:csh_itier 3 | — |
● ready · ● pending · ● reconstruct-needed
Detailed result card
Result card — uk_nationalised_industry_investment_rates
Verdict: INCONCLUSIVE_DATA_PENDING — no outcome or no treatment variable in spec
Pre-registration
- Claim: UK post-war nationalised industries (coal, rail, steel, gas) through 1979 achieved capital-investment rates comparable to sectoral peers in West Germany and France, falsifying the claim that public ownership categorically starves investment.
- Falsification rule: PRIMARY (dispositive): the hypothesis is SUPPORTED if the absolute gap |mean(UK csh_i, 1950-1979) - mean(DEU+FRA csh_i, 1950-1979)| is at most 5 percentage points of gross capital formation share of GDP. REFUTED if the UK undershoots the DEU+FRA peer mean by more than 10pp. Outcomes between -10pp and -5pp (UK below peers by 5-10pp) score as weakened (directionally consistent with crowd-out but not dispositive under the symmetric SUPPORTED band). Outcomes between +5pp and +10pp (UK above peers by 5-10pp) score as partial. METHOD_VALID: PWT csh_i has non-null annual coverage for all three countries (GBR, DEU, FRA) for at least 28 of the 30 years in 1950-1979. INFORMATIVE: per-country mean csh_i, year-by-year UK-vs-peer-mean gap series, reported in diagnostics.
- Falsification test: uk_vs_peer_country_csh_i_gap_1950_1979
Estimate
- Error: no outcome or no treatment variable in spec
Variables resolved
pwt:csh_i→ capital_investment_rate (outcome, publisher=pwt, n=10399)
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
v2 (2026-04-27) downgrades the original sector-level ambition (coal/rail/steel/gas) to a country-level test. No on-disk publisher provides comparable sectoral capital-formation series for GBR/DEU/FRA back to 1950. PWT csh_i (gross capital formation share of GDP at current PPPs) is the only series that covers the full 1950-1979 window for all three countries. The country-level test treats the UK's economy-wide investment share as a noisy proxy for the nationalised-sector investment share, on the rationale that the nationalised industries were a large enough share of UK gross fixed capital formation in this period to dominate the country-level signal if they were truly investment-starved. See methodology_note.