IESET.
Policies·france_plan_barre_1976

Plan Barre — stabilisation programme (September 1976)

FRA·1976 – 1978·enacted 1976-09-22·UDF-RPR centre-rightcandidate
movestax corporate↑monetary expansion direction↓spending level↓

What the policy did

Stabilisation package announced 22 September 1976 by PM Raymond Barre. Included temporary price and wage freezes (3 months), corporate surcharges, VAT rises on luxury goods, strong-franc commitment, and public-expenditure restraint. First French stabilisation programme explicitly framed around monetary- conservative principles. Politically unpopular — Barre's personal ratings among lowest ever recorded for a French PM.

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
↑
tax corporate
fiscal.tax_corporate
Statutory and effective corporate tax rates, treatment of depreciation, and international competitiveness.
increased · moderate
higher corporate tax burden
Corporate surcharges raised burden.
↓
monetary expansion direction
monetary.monetary_expansion_direction
Direction of monetary-base expansion decisions relative to trend. Separate from fiscal.transfer_expansion even when correlated.
decreased · moderate
contractionary (balance sheet shrink, rates above Taylor)
Strong-franc commitment; credit restrictions.
↓
spending level
fiscal.spending_level
General government spending as share of GDP, excluding transfers already captured under fiscal.transfer_expansion to avoid double-counting.
decreased · weak
lower spending share
Public-expenditure restraint announced; modest implementation.

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?".

Truss 2022 mini-budget shows that unfunded fiscal expansion above the ZLB triggers sharp bond-market and currency responses through expected-inflation and risk-premium channels.
unfunded_fiscal_expansion_above_zlb_bond_market_responseinferred
viafiscal.spending_levelmonetary.monetary_expansion_direction
SUPPORTED — GBP/USD trough on 2022-09-26 (1.0703) was 5.02% below the 2022-09-22 pre-announcement close (1.1269); log-decline +0.0515 clears the 3.0% threshold …
supported
Across the 2008-2014 ZLB era and the 2020-2021 pandemic-response window, large-scale de-facto monetary finance of fiscal expansion in the US, Japan, and the Eurozone did not produce headline-CPI inflation consistent with naive quantity-theoretic monetisation predictions: cumulative central-bank balance-sheet expansion exceeded 15% of GDP while CPI YoY remained below 3% in each economy across both windows.
monetary_finance_zlb_no_inflationinferred
viamonetary.monetary_expansion_directionfiscal.spending_level
REFUTED — CPI threshold breach: USA zlb_2008_2014 peak 3.81% in 2008; USA covid_2020_2021 peak 4.68% in 2021; Eurozone CPI not loaded
refuted
The Soviet central-planning system, having already exhibited TFP stagnation 1970-1989, underwent a canonical institutional and economic collapse 1989-1998 as plan-enforcement was withdrawn without functioning market institutions in place.
soviet_union_central_planning_gdp_collapse_1989_1991inferred
viamonetary.monetary_expansion_directionfiscal.spending_level
INCONCLUSIVE_DATA_PENDING — no outcome variable loaded; missing: ['derived: count of canonical_metrics with threshold met']
run pending
Fiscal multipliers are state-dependent: large at ZLB, small near full employment; no single-number answer is policy-relevant.
fiscal_multipliers_state_dependentinferred
viamonetary.monetary_expansion_directionfiscal.spending_level
REFUTED — sign - OPPOSITE claim +, cumulative_effect=-1.569, h=5, p_h=0.0155
refuted
Post-2008 large-scale asset purchase programmes by the Federal Reserve, ECB, Bank of England, and Bank of Japan produced a measurable divergence between asset-price inflation (equities and residential real estate) and headline consumer-price inflation until roughly 2021.
qe_asset_inflation_vs_cpi_divergence_post_2008inferred
viamonetary.monetary_expansion_directionfiscal.spending_level
refuted — Only 2 of 8 countries had even a 0.10 log-point asset-vs-CPI gap by 2020 (mean GAP_2020 = -0.02). The post-2008 divergence story does not survive a pa…
refuted
Across OECD economies 1995-2021, the cumulative fiscal multiplier on real output at the zero lower bound (defined as quarters with policy rate ≤ 0.50% AND inflation expectations anchored below 2.5%) exceeds 1.2 at horizon h=8 quarters, while the comparable normal-regime multiplier is below 0.7.
zlb_state_dependent_multiplier_pk_framinginferred
viamonetary.monetary_expansion_directionfiscal.spending_level
INCONCLUSIVE_DATA_PENDING — no treatment variable loaded; missing: ['oecd:NAQ_government_consumption', 'manual: Ramey-Zubairy military news shocks; Guajardo-Lei…
run pending
Post-2008 quantitative easing operated principally through a Minsky-style financialisation channel — collateral-revaluation, portfolio-rebalancing into long-duration risk assets, and a yield-driven compression of risk premia — rather than through the textbook quantity-theoretic broad-money or expectations channels.
qe_financialisation_minsky_channel_2008_2021inferred
viamonetary.monetary_expansion_directionfiscal.spending_level
INCONCLUSIVE_DATA_PENDING — insufficient observations after listwise deletion (14)
run pending
Abenomics' combined monetary-fiscal expansion lifted Japanese inflation and output partially but failed to durably escape the deflation equilibrium, consistent with NK models of near-permanent ZLB traps.
abenomics_monetary_fiscal_coordination_effectinferred
viamonetary.monetary_expansion_directionfiscal.spending_level
SUPPORTED — shape=ITS, sign matches claim +, mean_gap=+6.836, z=+17
supported

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.

IMF Stand-By Arrangement (Jun 2018, expanded Sep 2018)
ARG·2018
match
1.5
spending levelmonetary expansion direction
Milei Shock Therapy — Argentina December 2023 onward
ARG·2023
match
1.5
spending levelmonetary expansion direction
Greece Convergence Programme 1994-1999
GRC·1994
match
1.5
spending levelmonetary expansion direction
Israeli Economic Stabilization Plan (July 1985)
ISR·1985
match
1.5
spending levelmonetary expansion direction
France tournant de la rigueur (March 1983)
FRA·1983
match
1.4
spending levelmonetary expansion direction
EU/IMF/World Bank stand-by arrangement and Bajnai adjustment package (Hungary, 2008-2010)
HUN·2008
match
1.4
spending levelmonetary expansion direction
Chun price stabilisation programme (South Korea 1981)
KOR·1981
match
1.4
monetary expansion directionspending level
Korea IMF programme conditions and implementation (1997-2000)
KOR·1997
match
1.4
monetary expansion directionspending level