IESET.
Policies·de_atomausstieg_2011

Germany Atomausstieg (nuclear phase-out 2011)

DEU·2011 2023·enacted 2011-08-06·CDU/CSU-FDPcandidate
movesenergy supply securityenvironmental stringencyproperty rights

What the policy did

Reversal of the 2010 lifetime-extension (Laufzeitverlängerung) for German nuclear reactors following the Fukushima Daiichi accident of 11 March 2011. 13th amendment to the Atomgesetz (6 August 2011) immediately shut eight reactors and set phased closure of the remaining nine by end-2022 (extended briefly in 2022-2023 under Russia-gas crisis, final three closed April 2023). Complementary expansion of EEG renewable-feed-in framework. Germany's share of nuclear electricity fell from ~22% (2010) to 0% (2023); gas-and-coal share rose to fill the gap until 2022.

Policy-content fingerprint — what this policy moved, on which axes

Per invariant 3, reforms are scored by what they did on each channel-separated axis, not by the party that enacted them. This fingerprint is how the policy-match engine finds historical analogues.

intended
environmental stringency
regulatory.environmental_stringency
Environmental regulation stringency — emissions caps, standards, phase-out mandates, carbon pricing, renewable portfolio standards.
increased · moderate
more stringent environmental rules
Accelerated renewable rollout under EEG; coal rose in transition period.
unintended / side-effect
energy supply security
regulatory.energy_supply_security
Policy posture toward energy supply security — domestic production capacity, import diversification, strategic reserves, nuclear stance, fossil-fuel mix discipline.
decreased · strong · unintended
lower supply-security posture (single-supplier dependence, early phase-outs)
Removed baseload nuclear without replacement; deepened gas dependence 2011-2022.
property rights
institutional.property_rights
Security of private property rights — formal recognition, expropriation risk, titling systems.
decreased · weak · unintended
weaker property rights
Operators sued for constitutional compensation; Federal Constitutional Court awarded partial damages 2016/2020.

Enacted by

Empirical evidence — linked hypotheses

Explicit links are curated by the author. Inferred links are hypotheses in the library that test the same axes this policy moved — the framework's answer to "what does the data say about a policy like this?".

Policy-driven nuclear phaseouts produce a three-order causal chain.
nuclear_phaseout_energy_cost_industry_exitinferred
viaregulatory.energy_supply_securityregulatory.environmental_stringencyinstitutional.property_rights
PARTIAL — mean_gap=+0.04357, |gap|/pre_sd=8.7, p_perm=0.25; claim direction ambiguous
partial
Starting from comparable 1945 post-war conditions — same ethnicity, language, pre-war German institutional and industrial inheritance, and with the GDR inheriting a larger share of pre-war industrial capital in Saxony and Thuringia — the Federal Republic's Soziale Marktwirtschaft (Ordoliberal market economy with welfare state) versus the German Democratic Republic's planned economy with administered prices, state-enterprise production, and soft budget constraints produced by 1989 a canonical divergence that pattern-matches >=7 of 10 pre-registered extreme-outcome metrics, each drawn from a different publisher or methodology family.
west_east_germany_economic_system_divergence_1950_1989inferred
viainstitutional.property_rights
INCONCLUSIVE_DATA_PENDING — no outcome variable loaded; missing: ['derived: count of canonical_metrics with threshold met']
run pending
German industrial gross value added, manufacturing output, and real household income diverged materially from a synthetic-Germany donor- pool counterfactual over 2018-2025, and a variance decomposition across candidate channels attributes the majority of the divergence to regulatory-channel factors (Environmental Policy Stringency index increase post-2017, nuclear-phase-out schedule, single-supplier Russian gas dependency lock-in, industrial emission and reporting rules) rather than to fiscal-channel factors (general government consumption and tax burden were broadly stable across the Merkel late-term and Scholz years, with the debt brake in effect until 2023).
germany_decline_2018_2025_regulatory_not_fiscalinferred
viaregulatory.energy_supply_securityregulatory.environmental_stringency
partial — DEU below synthetic by -0.251 cumulative over 2018-2022 (sign correct), but magnitude or placebo p=0.36363636363636365 below pre-registered thresholds…
partial
Zimbabwean property-rights deterioration post-2000 (commercial-farm expropriation without compensation) precedes hyperinflation and output collapse; institutional mechanism is necessary, not merely monetary.
zimbabwe_property_rights_output_linkinferred
viainstitutional.property_rights
INCONCLUSIVE_DATA_PENDING
run pending
Countries with aggressive green-transition regulatory stringency layered on top of gas-indexed wholesale electricity markets and premature phase-out of firm-dispatchable generation (Germany, UK, Belgium, Netherlands) have experienced materially higher industrial electricity prices 2015-2023 than comparable economies with more measured transition paths (France's nuclear retention, Nordic hydro, USA's shale-gas-backed grid).
green_transition_cost_trajectory_electricity_pricesinferred
viaregulatory.energy_supply_securityregulatory.environmental_stringency
INCONCLUSIVE_DATA_PENDING — treatment 'aggressive_green_transition_dummy' has no within-country variation under country fixed effects
run pending
Zimbabwe's Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP, 2000-2002) combined with Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe deficit monetisation produced a canonical institutional and economic collapse 2000-2009 that manifests as >=7 of 10 pre-registered extreme-outcome metrics, each drawn from an independent data source and measuring a different causal layer (agricultural-capacity destruction, monetary collapse, output contraction, human-capital flight, humanitarian stress).
zimbabwe_hyperinflation_land_reform_output_collapse_2000_2009inferred
viainstitutional.property_rights
INCONCLUSIVE_DATA_PENDING — no outcome variable loaded; missing: ['derived: count of canonical_metrics with threshold met']
run pending
Market-compatible land reforms with compensation show stronger post-reform agricultural investment and productivity recovery than expropriatory reforms.
land_reform_compensation_investment_recoveryinferred
viainstitutional.property_rights
PARTIAL — coef=-0.2293, p=0.881 (above α=0.1); direction inconclusive
partial
Sectoral nationalisation produces a three-order causal chain.
nationalisation_investment_productivity_decline_venezuelainferred
viainstitutional.property_rightsregulatory.energy_supply_security
PARTIAL — VEN real GDP -70.9% from 2013 to 2023 vs donor median 15.5% (ARG/CHL/MEX); underperformance 86.4pp
partial

Similar historical policies

Ranked by axis-fingerprint overlap with this policy. Direction match bolded — those are the closest historical analogues. Shape of the match is what drives policy-outcome comparison, not the country or party label.

References