IESET.
Hypotheses·distribution·uk_thatcher_era_labour_share_decline_1979_1990

The UK labour share of national income fell during the Thatcher era (1979-1990) by a magnitude not explained by sectoral composition shifts alone.

A bundle of Thatcherite reforms — 1980-1984 union-law tightening, 1980 Right-to-Buy council-housing privatisation, 1986 Big Bang financial deregulation — jointly explains the decomposition residual once sector mix is netted out.

INCONCLUSIVEengine/runs/uk_thatcher_era_labour_share_decline_1979_1990

INCONCLUSIVE_DATA_PENDING — no decomposition channel loaded; missing: []

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. no decomposition channel loaded; missing: []

why it matters

Distributional claims often sound morally clear but are empirically complex. This test asks whether the proposed channel explains real differences across places.

how the test works

It compares 1 country or place units from 1979 to 1990, using a panel fe decomposition design, with fixed effects for year.

what was measured
What changed
  • Thatcher reform bundle indicator
What we checked
  • Labour share of national income
  • Union density
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_thatcher_era_labour_share_decline_1979_1990
1007550250197919851990GBR
illustrative sketch · run pending
No coefficients yet. When the model fires, this chart will show labour_share_of_national_income across 1 sampled countries over 1979–1990.
The shapes above are stylised — none of the lines are real data.
Placeholder for uk_thatcher_era_labour_share_decline_1979_1990. Published chart will be generated from engine/runs/uk_thatcher_era_labour_share_decline_1979_1990/chart_data.json.

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.

Marxian Political Economywins if SUPPORTEDpartial/no-call

Pre-registration

registration ordering unverified
first-spec commit 4c8ce8e · 2026-07-18T22:11:21Z
run generated · 2026-06-29T17:51:18Z
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.

The UK labour share of national income fell during the Thatcher era (1979-1990) by a magnitude not explained by sectoral composition shifts alone. A bundle of Thatcherite reforms — 1980-1984 union-law tightening, 1980 Right-to-Buy council-housing privatisation, 1986 Big Bang financial deregulation — jointly explains the decomposition residual once sector mix is netted out.

Falsification criterion — what would disprove this

set before the run · honoured after

This hypothesis is considered falsified if:

Primary v2 gate uses Penn World Table `labsh` for GBR. The claim is refuted if UK labour share does not fall by at least 2 percentage points between 1979 and 1990. It is supported only if labour share falls by at least 3 percentage points and the available sector-mix proxy does not explain the move. If labour share falls between 2pp and 3pp or sector-mix evidence is unavailable, the result is weakened/partial.

formal test & threshold
test:      uk_pwt_labsh_endpoint_1979_1990
threshold: refute if labsh_1990 - labsh_1979 > -0.02; support if <= -0.03 and sector-mix proxy does not absorb the decline

Method

Template
panel_fe_decomposition
Fixed effects
year
Clustering
year
Sample
1 countries · 1979 – 1990
Evidence type
associational

Single-country decomposition: shift-share split of UK labour-share decline 1979-1990 into sector-mix (between-sector) and within-sector components, using ONS sector accounts. Then event-study (±3y) on three reform dates (1980 Right-to-Buy, 1984 union-law tightening peak, 1986 Big Bang) on the within-sector residual. HAC SEs. Caveat: overlapping treatment windows make joint attribution noisy — flagged TODO swarm-6e for sensitivity using OECD international comparators as residual benchmark.

Data

VariableSourceTransform
labour_share_of_national_income
outcome
pwt:labshtier 3
level
union_density
outcome
ilostat:unemployment_ratetier 2
level
thatcher_reform_bundle_indicator
treatment
constructed:indicators for 1980 Right-to-Buy enactment, 1980/82/84/88 Employment Acts (union-law tightening), 1986 Big Bang financiatier 5
indicator
manufacturing_share_gdp
control
world_bank_wdi:NV.IND.MANF.ZStier 2
level
log_gdp_per_capita
control
world_bank_wdi:NY.GDP.PCAP.KDtier 2
log

● ready  · ● pending  · ● reconstruct-needed

Detailed result card

Result card — uk_thatcher_era_labour_share_decline_1979_1990

Verdict: INCONCLUSIVE_DATA_PENDING — no decomposition channel loaded; missing: []

Pre-registration

  • Claim: The UK labour share of national income fell during the Thatcher era (1979-1990) by a magnitude not explained by sectoral composition shifts alone. A bundle of Thatcherite reforms — 1980-1984 union-law tightening, 1980 Right-to-Buy council-housing privatisation, 1986 Big Bang financial deregulation — jointly explains the decomposition residual once sector mix is netted out.
  • Falsification rule: Primary v2 gate uses Penn World Table labsh for GBR. The claim is refuted if UK labour share does not fall by at least 2 percentage points between 1979 and 1990. It is supported only if labour share falls by at least 3 percentage points and the available sector-mix proxy does not explain the move. If labour share falls between 2pp and 3pp or sector-mix evidence is unavailable, the result is weakened/partial.
  • Falsification test: uk_pwt_labsh_endpoint_1979_1990

Estimate

  • Error: no decomposition channel loaded; missing: []

Variables resolved

  • pwt:labsh → labour_share_of_national_income (outcome, publisher=pwt, n=7970)
  • ilostat:unemployment_rate → union_density (outcome, publisher=ilostat, n=10188)
  • world_bank_wdi:NV.IND.MANF.ZS → manufacturing_share_gdp (controls, publisher=world_bank_wdi, n=9698)
  • world_bank_wdi:NY.GDP.PCAP.KD → log_gdp_per_capita (controls, publisher=world_bank_wdi, n=12104)

Variables missing data

  • constructed: indicators for 1980 Right-to-Buy enactment, 1980/82/84/88 Employment Acts (union-law tightening), 1986 Big Bang financial deregulation; treated as joint event-study. (treatment, name=thatcher_reform_bundle_indicator) — vintage not on disk

Generated by scripts/run_panel_fe.py at 2026-06-29T17:51:18+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

Maps the marxian school's Thatcher-bundle claim on the UK labour-share decline 1979-1990 to a shift-share-with-residual decomposition plus event studies on the three policy dates. v2 pins a first-order national PWT labour-share screen because local ONS sector accounts are not yet available.

Authored framework. Read the transparency note.