IESET.
Policies·ie_promissory_note_restructuring_2013

Promissory Note Restructuring 2013

IRL·2011 2017candidate
movesspending levelfinancial deregulationtax corporatetransfer expansion

What the policy did

In February 2013 the government wound up the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation (former Anglo Irish/INBS) and replaced the EUR 28 billion promissory notes with long-dated Irish government bonds, exchanged through the Central Bank's ELA portfolio. The Promissory Notes Act 2013 and accompanying liquidations legislation extended the average maturity from c.7-8 years to over 30 years, reducing near-term debt-service pressure while maintaining ECB monetary- financing constraints.

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
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
Lower near-term interest costs, but headline expenditure ceilings remained binding under MoU.
financial deregulation
regulatory.financial_deregulation
Financial-sector regulation — banking separation, capital requirements, cross-border activity rules, derivatives oversight.
decreased · weak
looser financial regulation
IBRC liquidation transferred residual loan books to NAMA under the bank-resolution regime.
tax corporate
fiscal.tax_corporate
Statutory and effective corporate tax rates, treatment of depreciation, and international competitiveness.
unchanged · weak
Restructuring acted via debt management; corporate-tax regime untouched.
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.
unchanged · weak
Debt-side action; transfer programmes were neither expanded nor cut by this measure.

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 welfare states sustain long-run real GDP per capita growth when paired with market flexibility (low product- and labour-market barriers), trade openness, and fiscal discipline (debt-to-GDP below 90%), but not when paired with rigid product and labour markets, in an OECD and rich- country panel 1980-2020.
welfare_state_market_flexibility_complementinferred
viafiscal.spending_levelfiscal.transfer_expansion
PARTIAL — coef=+3.308e-18, p=0.653; effect magnitude effectively zero
partial
Large-scale universal or near-universal transfer programmes produce a three-order causal chain.
universal_transfer_programmes_labour_force_participation_declineinferred
viafiscal.transfer_expansionfiscal.spending_level
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
The 2007-2009 global financial crisis originated in household-debt-financed consumption sustaining aggregate demand despite stagnant real wages, a Minsky-plus-Marx pattern.
gfc_household_debt_wage_stagnation_linkinferred
viaregulatory.financial_deregulationfiscal.transfer_expansionfiscal.spending_level
PARTIAL — coef=-0.01111, p=0; claim direction not auto-inferred
partial
Conditional on latest real GDP per capita and broad Heritage region, countries with higher Heritage lower-tax-burden score in 2024 have lower latest-available under-5 mortality.
heritage_tax_burden_under5_mortality_income_region_robustnessinferred
viafiscal.transfer_expansionfiscal.spending_levelfiscal.tax_corporate
PARTIAL — controlled coefficient not decisive (coef=-0.3884, p=0.7236)
partial
Following Koo (2008, 2014), the post-2008 advanced-economy recovery exhibited the diagnostic pattern of a balance-sheet recession: the private sector (households especially, plus non-financial business in the most leveraged countries) shifted simultaneously from net borrowing to net saving in pursuit of debt reduction, even when policy interest rates were at the zero lower bound.
gfc_balance_sheet_recession_post_2008_household_dual_mandateinferred
viafiscal.transfer_expansionregulatory.financial_deregulationfiscal.spending_level
INCONCLUSIVE_DATA_PENDING — treatment 'household_saving_rate' has no within-country variation under country fixed effects
run pending
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_levelfiscal.transfer_expansion
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
Countries in the top quartile of Heritage lower-tax-burden score in 2024 have lower latest-available under-5 mortality than bottom-quartile countries, consistent with free-market country policy regimes outperforming less market-oriented regimes on this outcome.
heritage_tax_burden_under5_mortality_current_gapinferred
viafiscal.transfer_expansionfiscal.spending_level
PARTIAL — gap sign/magnitude not decisive (diff=-1.127, p=0.811)
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

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.