IESET.
Policies·ir_foreign_debt_crisis_1993_1994

Iran foreign-debt payment crisis (1993-1994)

IRN·1993 – 1994candidate
movesspending level↓

What the policy did

Iran accumulated ~$11bn in external arrears through 1993-94 on short-term letters of credit extended by European and Japanese banks to finance reconstruction imports. Informal rescheduling negotiations with creditor governments stretched repayments to 3-6 year schedules by 1995, avoiding formal Paris/London Club treatment but signalling the limits of Rafsanjani's reconstruction financing model.

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.

unintended / side-effect
↓
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 · unintended
lower spending share
Post-crisis import compression and forced fiscal tightening.

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_level
PARTIAL — coef=+3.308e-18, p=0.653; effect magnitude effectively zero
partial
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_level
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
Fiscal multipliers are state-dependent: large at ZLB, small near full employment; no single-number answer is policy-relevant.
fiscal_multipliers_state_dependentinferred
viafiscal.spending_level
REFUTED — sign - OPPOSITE claim +, cumulative_effect=-1.569, h=5, p_h=0.0155
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
viafiscal.spending_level
INCONCLUSIVE_DATA_PENDING — no outcome variable loaded; missing: ['derived: count of canonical_metrics with threshold met']
run pending
UK Truss mini-budget 2022 gilt crisis reflected market confidence and institutional-framework rupture rather than an MMT-predicted hard fiscal limit, because the BoE restored order by intervening as issuer.
uk_truss_mini_budget_currency_sovereign_mechanisminferred
viafiscal.spending_level
partial — Both mechanism legs are directionally consistent but at least one fails the SUPPORTED threshold: FX leg holds (5.02% trough decline); yield leg partia…
partial
UK GDP per capita (PPP, constant international dollars) diverged negatively from a matched synthetic counterfactual of similar-income anglophone/developed economies (USA, CAN, AUS, NZL, DEU, NLD, CHE) starting around 2008 and widening post-2016 (Brexit referendum).
uk_economic_decline_multi_movementinferred
viafiscal.spending_level
INCONCLUSIVE_DATA_PENDING — treatment 'uk_post_2008' has no within-country variation under country fixed effects
run pending
Across the OECD 38, over 2000-latest, larger general government final consumption as a share of GDP is associated with slower growth in real household disposable income per capita, controlling for demographics, initial-income level, energy-price exposure, and trade openness.
state_size_reduces_household_income_growthinferred
viafiscal.spending_level
PARTIAL — coef=-1.248e-17, p=0.809; effect magnitude effectively zero
partial
Credible fiscal consolidation episodes — defined as sustained primary balance improvement of at least 2% of GDP over 3 years, not reversed within 5 years, and accompanied by declining debt-to-GDP trajectories — predict stronger subsequent 10-year real GDP per capita growth and private investment than repeated discretionary fiscal stimulus in mature economies, in an OECD panel 1980-2020.
fiscal_consolidation_credibility_growthinferred
viafiscal.spending_level
supported
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.

Argentine sovereign debt restructuring 2005
ARG·2005
match
0.7
spending level
Ley de Déficit Cero 25.453 (July 2001)
ARG·2001
match
0.7
spending level
IMF Stand-By Arrangement (Jun 2018, expanded Sep 2018)
ARG·2018
match
0.7
spending level
Milei Shock Therapy — Argentina December 2023 onward
ARG·2023
match
0.7
spending level
Belgium debt consolidation trajectory 1992-1999
BEL·1992
match
0.7
spending level
Belgium Global Plan 1993 (Plan Global / Globaal Plan)
BEL·1993
match
0.7
spending level
Reforma da Previdência — Constitutional Amendment 103/2019
BRA·2019
match
0.7
spending level
Teto de Gastos — Constitutional Amendment 95 spending cap
BRA·2016
match
0.7
spending level