Policies·ec_decreto_883_fuel_subsidy_2019

Ecuador Decreto 883 Fuel-Subsidy Elimination (reversed)

ECU·2019 – 2019·enacted 2019-10-01candidate

What the policy did

Executive decree issued 1 Oct 2019 eliminating gasoline (extra, ecopaís) and diesel price subsidies, liberalising retail prices in line with the IMF EFF. Triggered 12 days of indigenous-led protests (CONAIE), transport strikes, a brief relocation of the government to Guayaquil, and at least 11 deaths. Repealed via Decreto 894 on 14 Oct 2019 after CONAIE-government dialogue; a successor "focalisation" mechanism was negotiated but implementation delayed.

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

↓

sectoral subsidy

fiscal.sectoral_subsidy

Targeted industrial and sectoral subsidies (renewable energy, chip manufacturing, agriculture, green hydrogen, etc).

decreased · moderate

reduced sectoral subsidies

Decree eliminated fuel subsidy representing roughly USD 1.3bn annually; reversed within two weeks.

Enacted by

ecuador_moreno_2017_2021

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?".

The 2022-2026 wave of major-economy industrial-policy programmes — US IRA + CHIPS, EU Critical Raw Materials Act + Net-Zero Industry Act, EU Chips Act, Japan Green Transformation (GX, ¥150tn / ~$1tn announced), Korea K-Chips + Korean New Deal 2.0, China 14th Five-Year Plan + Made-in-China-2025-2.0 with semiconductors and clean energy as national-security frontier — represents the largest coordinated wave of industrial-policy spending in the post-1970s OECD record.

green_industrial_policy_global_chip_race_2022_2026inferred

viafiscal.sectoral_subsidy

INCONCLUSIVE_DATA_PENDING — insufficient observations after listwise deletion (20)

run pending

Biden's IRA/CHIPS industrial policy will show partial success on capacity-building metrics and mixed results on job creation, consistent with the conditional view that industrial policy works where targeting is technically competent and governance is strong.

industrial_policy_semiconductor_chips_act_effectivenessinferred

viafiscal.sectoral_subsidy

inconclusive — Stacked: (4/4) spec-named semi-specific series unavailable on disk (oecd:STAN_INDUSTRY ISIC C26, bls:CES3133, ilostat:semiconductor employment, c…

run pending

Lula third-term's Nova Indústria Brasil 2024 industrial-policy package, conditioned on export performance and technology-diffusion metrics, produces measurable sectoral capability gains (semiconductors, green hydrogen, health-industrial complex) by 2030 — replicating the East Asian export-discipline conditionality pattern rather than the earlier Latin American import-substitution-industrialisation pattern.

nova_industria_brasil_export_discipline_pattern_effectinferred

viafiscal.sectoral_subsidy

INCONCLUSIVE_DATA_PENDING

run pending

Across a broad panel of countries 1960-2019, higher trade openness predicts faster long-run convergence of real GDP per capita toward the global frontier (the United States) than industrial-policy intensity does.

trade_openness_long_run_income_convergenceinferred

viafiscal.sectoral_subsidy

PARTIAL — coef=+6.729e-18, p=0.00881; effect magnitude effectively zero

partial

China's strongest total factor productivity acceleration occurred during the WTO-accession period (2001-2008) linked to tariff reduction, foreign competition, and regulatory harmonisation, while the subsequent subsidy-heavy state-direction phase (post-2008, intensifying post-2015) is associated with weaker TFP growth and rising capital misallocation.

china_post_wto_market_opening_vs_subsidy_tfpinferred

viafiscal.sectoral_subsidy

SUPPORTED — shape=ITS, sign matches claim +, mean_gap=+0.1126, z=+3.9

supported

The 2022 US CHIPS and Science Act (~$52bn manufacturing subsidy + 25% ITC) produced a measurable acceleration in announced and realised US semiconductor fab construction starts and capacity additions over 2023- 2027, narrowing the US share-of-global advanced-logic capacity gap relative to Taiwan + South Korea, but the realised capacity addition by 2027 falls materially short of both the headline announcements (Intel Ohio, TSMC Arizona, Samsung Texas, Micron New York) and the pre-CHIPS US share-recovery rhetoric.

chips_act_2022_semiconductor_capacity_2024_2027inferred

viafiscal.sectoral_subsidy

INCONCLUSIVE_DATA_PENDING — insufficient obs after listwise deletion (9)

run pending

In a panel of middle-income countries 1990-2020, export complexity (Hausmann-Hidalgo Economic Complexity Index) rises more following reforms that improve foreign market access and reduce domestic entry barriers than following expansions of subsidy-only industrial policy.

export_complexity_market_access_vs_subsidyinferred

viafiscal.sectoral_subsidy

PARTIAL — coef=+4.68e-14, p=0.393; effect magnitude effectively zero

partial

Hong Kong's long-run income convergence to the productivity frontier without classic industrial policy (sectoral targeting, directed credit, national champions, or SOE promotion) matches or exceeds that of developmentalist East Asian comparators after controlling for initial income, human capital, and trade openness.

hong_kong_no_industrial_policy_frontier_comparisoninferred

viafiscal.sectoral_subsidy

REFUTED — coef=-0.06133 (sign opposite claim +), p=7.33e-15

refuted

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.

Angola fuel-subsidy phase-out 2023

Utility 'sincere-pricing' tariff hikes and subsidy reduction (2016-2019)

Milei Shock Therapy — Argentina December 2023 onward

ARG·2023