IESET.
Policies·id_sby_fuel_subsidy_reform_2005

SBY fuel-subsidy price liberalisation 2005

IDN·2005 – 2008·enacted 2005-10-01·Demokrat-led rainbow coalitioncandidate
movessectoral subsidy↓transfer expansion↑

What the policy did

Raised administered retail prices of subsidised fuels (premium gasoline and kerosene) by an average of 126% on 1 October 2005, after a smaller March 2005 hike, in response to Brent oil moving from ~USD 40 to ~USD 60/barrel and fuel subsidies threatening to exceed 3% of GDP. Savings were partly redirected to the BLT unconditional cash-transfer to the bottom-quintile population and to health and education block grants. A repeat hike followed in May 2008 when oil reached USD 140.

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 · strong
reduced sectoral subsidies
Single largest real cut to energy subsidies in post-1998 Indonesia.
↑
transfer expansion
fiscal.transfer_expansion
Size of cash and near-cash transfer programmes (unemployment benefits, means-tested assistance, universal child benefits). Architecturally distinct from forced-saving schemes — see condition welfare_architecture.
increased · moderate
larger transfer footprint
Roughly half of the fiscal space redirected to BLT cash transfers.

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?".

Large-scale universal or near-universal transfer programmes produce a three-order causal chain.
universal_transfer_programmes_labour_force_participation_declineinferred
viafiscal.transfer_expansion
partial — Prime-age LFP fell by ≥1.0pp in 2/5 cases (threshold for SUPPORTED: ≥3). First-order improved in 3/4 cases. Mixed: consistent with the spec's design-d…
partial
Universal single-payer healthcare systems (NHS, Canadian Medicare) produce lower per-capita healthcare expenditure with equal or better life-expectancy outcomes than the US multi-payer system.
single_payer_cost_outcome_comparisoninferred
viafiscal.transfer_expansion
supported_subset — cost test PASSES (USA per-capita PPP $10957 vs GBR/CAN mean $5663, ratio 1.93x > 1.5); single-payer matched-or-beat USA on 4/5 tested outcome…
supported
Higher broad state-consumption burden proxies predict worse child-mortality nutrition-risk outcomes.
state_agriculture_controls_malnutritioninferred
viafiscal.transfer_expansionfiscal.sectoral_subsidy
PARTIAL — coef=+1.143, p=0.105 (above α=0.1); direction inconclusive
partial
Mandatory pharmacy-level generic substitution predicts pharmaceutical-spending reductions without worse mortality outcomes.
generic_substitution_mandate_savings_no_harminferred
viafiscal.transfer_expansionfiscal.sectoral_subsidy
REFUTED — coef=+811.4 (sign opposite claim -), p=0.00685
refuted
The American Rescue Plan Act (March 2021) expansion of the Child Tax Credit to USD 3000-3600 per child with full refundability and monthly disbursement (July-December 2021) produced a measurable and immediate decline in monthly child-poverty rate of at least 4 percentage points (Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia time-series), with the credit's December 2021 expiration producing a corresponding immediate reversal — providing high-frequency event-window evidence on near-instantaneous cash-transfer-to-poverty mechanics.
welfare_transfer_us_arpa_expanded_ctc_2021inferred
viafiscal.transfer_expansionfiscal.sectoral_subsidy
WEAKENED - SPM child poverty fell 4.5pp and rebounded 7.2pp; monthly CPSP and parental-LFP gates are not loaded
refuted
Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward (1958-1962), characterised by forced collectivisation into People's Communes, Lysenkoist rejection of scientific agronomy, diversion of rural labour to backyard steel production, and cadre-competition-driven inflation of reported harvests, produced a canonical institutional-economic collapse that manifests as >=7 of 10 pre-registered extreme-outcome metrics, each drawn from an independent data source or methodology family and measuring a different causal layer (demographic mortality, agricultural output, macroeconomic contraction, institutional coverage, human capital).
great_leap_forward_famine_output_collapse_1959_1961inferred
viafiscal.transfer_expansionfiscal.sectoral_subsidy
INCONCLUSIVE_DATA_PENDING — no outcome variable loaded; missing: ['derived: count of canonical_metrics with threshold met']
run pending
UK post-1945 Attlee reforms (NHS, nationalisation of coal/rail/steel, expanded public housing) delivered measurable improvements in life expectancy and child mortality without undermining subsequent 1950s-1960s growth.
uk_attlee_reforms_output_health_outcomesinferred
viafiscal.transfer_expansion
refuted — Only 0 of 3 primaries hold. Failed: life-expectancy, infant-mortality, 1950s growth. UK 1950s growth +1.69%/yr; LE gain +3.29y (peer-mean +4.45y); IMR…
refuted
China's combined social-protection expansion — urban dibao (1999, expanded 2003) plus rural dibao (2007 universalisation) plus rural-pension scheme NRPS (2009 launch reaching 459M+ enrollees by 2013) — reduced rural extreme-poverty headcount by at least 5 percentage points within five years (2009-2014) net of growth-channel effects, identified off province-staggered NRPS rollout 2009-2012 and province-level dibao-spending intensity in panel-FE design.
welfare_transfer_china_dibao_rural_pension_2009inferred
viafiscal.transfer_expansionfiscal.sectoral_subsidy
PARTIAL - national poverty fell 16.0pp over 2010-2014, but province rollout/intensity data are missing for the net-of-growth claim
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.

Targeted Subsidies Reform Law (hedfmandi-yarane-ha)
IRN·2010
match
1.9
sectoral subsidytransfer expansion
Iran bread/flour subsidy 'economic surgery' and smart-card quotas
IRN·2022
match
1.7
sectoral subsidytransfer expansion
Jokowi fuel-subsidy cut and redirection 2014
IDN·2014
match
1.6
sectoral subsidytransfer expansion
Iran Nov 2019 fuel-price tripling and quota reform
IRN·2019
match
1.6
sectoral subsidytransfer expansion
Spain industrial reconversion (Ley 27/1984)
ESP·1983
match
1.5
sectoral subsidytransfer expansion
Milei Shock Therapy — Argentina December 2023 onward
ARG·2023
match
1.4
transfer expansionsectoral subsidy
Diesel subsidy rationalisation — Peninsular Malaysia (Jun 2024)
MYS·2024
match
1.4
sectoral subsidytransfer expansion
Malaysia fuel-subsidy partial reform (2008)
MYS·2008
match
1.4
sectoral subsidytransfer expansion

References